vol III Development:

Chapter 4: Physics

Physics: Introduction

We are exploring the possibility that the Universe is not the creation of a pre-existing God, but is itself divine, responsible for its own existence. Our model of God embraces the ancient idea that God is pure action, but adds the mathematical discovery that dynamic systems have fixed points. We see the complex fixed structures in the Universe as fixed points in the divine dynamics.

The two previous chapters of this volume on Development (chapter 2: Model and chapter 3: Cybernetics) are attempts to develop a formal model of the Universe based on this hypothesis. We now turn to applying this model to the world of our experience.

Our model pictures the observable Universe as a layered communication network analogous to human networks like the internet. The lowest layer of engineered networks is the physical layer, which transmits the physical symbols corresponding to the information processed by the higher layers of the network. The physical layer of a wireless network, for instance, transmits photons. The physical layer of a print network comprises symbols printed on some substrate like paper.

If we assume that the Universe is divine, physics becomes the study of God's body. We accept Landauer's hypothesis that information is physical. Like us, God communicates through its body. All our language is body language, communicated through bodily motions like speech, writing or dance. The body is the most abstract, that is the least complex, of the layers of complexity in the structure of the Universe. Rolf Landauer: Information is a physical entity.

Modern physics sees the world in terms of particles and fields. The particles are observable. The invisible fields constitute the underlying process which is believed to be responsible for the nature of the particles and their creation and annihilation. This picture, built up over the last century, is called quantum field theory. Quantum field theory - Wikipedia

Implicit in modern physics is the feeling that the Universe has been carefully tuned to evolve in the way it has and that everything could have been otherwise. Our hypothesis that the Universe is divine suggests that the Universe embraces all possibilities and owes nothing to a creator outside itself. The only constraint upon it is that it, like the traditional God, it must be consistent with itself.

The traditional beginning

The history recorded in the Christian Old Testament and Hebrew Bible tells us that it all began when God created the world:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water. God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that light was good, and God divided light from darkness. God called light 'day' and darkness 'night'. Evening came and morning came: the first day. . . . Genesis I:1-5, Christian biblical canons - Wikipedia, Development of the Hebrew Bible canon - Wikpedia

These ancient texts say nothing about where God came from. God is tacitly assumed to have existed forever.

The 'big bang' theory

A modern alternative to this story is the 'hot big bang theory' which works on the same general principle. The world started from something extremely primitive like chaos, the vacuum or the initial singularity, and grew into the world we know today. The book of Genesis explains this movement as the work of a God distinct the world. Here we agree that God creates the Universe insofar as the divine Universe creates itself. Both explanations reach back to the same mystery, but their implications for human life differ. Big Bang - Wikipedia, NASA, Vacuum - Wikipedia, Initial singularity - Wikipedia

Physics

About 2500 years ago Parmenides asked the fundamental scientific question: How can we have certain knowledge of a moving Universe? He concluded that there must be a core to reality that does not move. We now call elements of this core 'laws of nature' or symmetries. John Palmer - Parmenides

Parmenides' idea was taken up by Plato, who called the unchanging aspects of reality forms and made them invisible to us. What we see on Earth, Plato felt, is just a shadow of the perfect world of forms. Four hundred years after Plato the supreme form, the form of the Good, contributed substantially to the Christian idea of God. Christians still place the source of creation outside the Universe. of Plato: Parmenides, Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia

Here we accept that God is pure activity, but we see no need to place God outside the Universe. Like Aristotle's first unmoved mover, which also contributed significantly to the Christian idea of God, we place the source of the Universe inside it rather than outside. We see the stable and knowable elements of the Universe as instances of the fixed points in the divine dynamics predicted by mathematical fixed point theory. We understand all these fixed points as messages from the divinity, what Christians call revelation. Aquinas: Does God exist, Fixed point theorem - Wikipedia

From a theological point of view, the only constraint on an observable God is that it be consistent. If the Universe is divine we can look forward to the day when we understand why the Universe as we see it is the only consistent Universe, and that (consistent with its divinity) it fills the whole space of possibility.

The birth of physics

Our word physics comes from the ancient Greek word meaning the nature, inborn quality, property or constitution of a person or thing. Liddell & Scott

The Greeks struggled with the fact that the world is both constant and changing. Aristotle (384-322 bc) concluded that there must be two principles in the constitution of the world: one static and one dynamic. Following his teacher Plato, he called the static elements of reality forms, with the difference that Aristotle's forms are not invisible like Plato's. The dynamic element of reality, which could be moulded by different forms, he called matter.

In modern times, the names have changed, but this duality in our conception of the physical world remains. The world as a whole is dynamic, pure action. There are fixed point in this action. Some fixed points appear to last forever, others are temporary. The rate of change of fixed points is correlated with energy.

Energy is correlated with rate of change, so that an eternal unchanging form may be imagined as a consistent structure without any energy at all. Only those features of the world which do not change can be written down once for all. Nevertheless, we can record moving systems by sampling them fast enough. This is how we make digital recordings of music, sampling it about 40 000 times per second. The result is a kinematic representation of the music, like a movie. Sampling (signal processing) - Wikipedia

A problem

Modern physics is a problematic blend of three theories, quantum mechanics and special relativity, which together constitute quantum field theory, and and general relativity. Quantum theory describes the small scale structure of the Universe and general relativity describes the large scale structure. At present these two theories are somewhat incompatible. We would expect, if the Universe is truly one and consistent, that we will eventually find one consistent model that covers all physical phenomena. A theory of everything.

Quantum field theory is particularly interested in structures and events occupying small volumes of spacetime. Physics expect to find meaningful structure down to the Planck scale of action. It expects to understand this structure using something like quantum field theory. Planck scale - Wikipedia, Zee

General relativity is concerned with the large scale structure of the Universe. General relativity is a 'classical' (pre-quantum) theory which is proving very difficult to bring into the quantum fold. Physics currently entertains a very wide variety of unifications, each with its advocates, but none with clear supremacy. Introduction to general relativity - Wikipedia, Deutsch, Greene, Smolin, Unified field theory - Wikipedia

Here we hope to reconcile these two theories by incorporating them into a broader point of view. We begin by establishing a correspondence between the Universe seen by physics and the transfinite network we have chosen to model God. Standard model - Wikipedia

Once this correspondence is established, we can begin to see the physical world as the hardware on which the spiritual world is processed. The root of this vision is the recognition that all information in our Universe is represented physically by observable events. Rolf Landauer

The final result will be a theology based on the observable Universe. Theology is the traditional theory of everything. Traditional theology began to lose its credibility in Galileo's time, when it became clear that we must base our science on experience, not on the words of ancient authorities. The first step toward returning theology to its rightful place in science is to accept that the Universe is divine, and that God is observable: all our experience is experience of God.

[revised 16 May 2016]

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Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Deutsch, David, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes - and its Implications, Allen Lane Penguin Press 1997 Jacket: 'Quantum physics, evolution, computation and knowledge - these four strands of scientific theory and philosophy have, until now, remained incomplete explanations of the way the universe works. . . . Oxford scholar DD shows how they are so closely intertwined that we cannot properly understand any one of them without reference to the other three. . . .'  Amazon   back

Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. . . . In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands  Amazon   back

Feynman, Richard, QED: The Strange Story of Light and Matter, Princeton UP 1988 Jacket: 'Quantum electrodynamics - or QED for short - is the 'strange theory' that explains how light and electrons interact. Thanks to Richard Feynmann and his colleagues, it is also one of the rare parts of physics that is known for sure, a theory that has stood the test of time. . . . In this beautifully lucid set of lectures he provides a definitive introduction to QED.'  Amazon   back

Greene, Brian, The Elegant Universe: superstrings, hidden dimensions and the quest for the ultimate theory, W W Norton and Company 1999 Jacket: 'Brian Greene has come forth with a beautifully crafted account of string theory - a theory that appears to be a most promising way station to an ultimate theory of everything. His book gives a clear, simple, yet masterful account that makes a complex theory very accessible to nonscientists but is also a delightful read for the professional.' David M Lee  Amazon   back

Hawking, Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time , Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity . . . leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.'  Amazon   back

Hudson, Michael, and Cornelia Wunsch (editors), Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping, Standardization and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, CDL Press 2004   Amazon   back

Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford University Press 1995 Amazon Book Description: 'Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon is the most comprehensive and up-to-date ancient Greek dictionary in the world. It is used by every student of ancient Greek in the English-speaking world, and is an essential library and scholarly purchase there and in W. Europe and Japan. The main dictionary covers every surviving ancient Greek author and text discovered up to 1940, from the Pre-Classical Greek of the 11C - 8C BC (for example Homer and Hesiod), through Classical Greek (7C - 5C BC) to the Hellenistic Period, including the Greek Old and New Testaments. Entries list irregular inflections, and together with the definition, each sense includes citations from Greek authors illustrating usage. The Lexicon is Greek into English only, as are other ancient Greek dictionaries. This is the market expectation among both students and scholars. In 1968 the Lexicon was updated with a Supplement, which was available as a separate volume (until 1992) or bound together with the dictionary. Representing the culmination of 13 years' work, the new Revised Supplement is a complete replacement for the 1968 Supplement. Nearly twice the size of the 1968 edition, with over 20,000 entries, it adds to the dictionary words and forms from papyri and inscriptions discovered between 1940 and the 1990s as well as a host of other revisions, updatings, and corrections to the main dictionary. Linear B forms are shown within entries for the first time, and the Revised Supplement gives the dictionary a date-range from 1200 BC to 600 AD. It is fully cross-referenced to the main text but additions have been designed to be easily used without constant reference to the main text.'  Amazon   back

Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . '  Amazon   back

Newton, Isaac, and Julia Budenz, I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman (Translators), The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, University of California Press 1999 This completely new translation, the first in 270 years, is based on the third (1726) edition, the final revised version approved by Newton; it includes extracts from the earlier editions, corrects errors found in earlier versions, and replaces archaic English with contemporary prose and up-to-date mathematical forms. . . . The illuminating Guide to the Principia by I. Bernard Cohen, along with his and Anne Whitman's translation, will make this preeminent work truly accessible for today's scientists, scholars, and students.  Amazon   back

Pais, Abraham, 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford UP 1982 Jacket: In this . . . major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire ouvre. . . . Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography . . . including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.'  Amazon   back

Pais, Abraham, Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press 1986 Preface: 'I will attempt to describe what has been discovered and understood about the constituents of matter, the laws to which they are subject and the forces that act on them [in the period 1895-1983]. . . . I will attempt to convey that these have been times of progress and stagnation, of order and chaos, of belief and incredulity, of the conventional and the bizarre; also of revolutionaries and conservatives, of science by individuals and by consortia, of little gadgets and big machines, and of modest funds and big moneys.' AP  Amazon   back

Smolin, Lee, The Life of the Cosmos, Oxford University Pres 1997 Jacket: 'Smolin posits that a process of self-organisation like that of biological evolution shapes the universe, as it develops and eventually reproduces through black holes, each of which may result in a big bang and a new universe. Natural selection may guide the appearance of the laws of physics, favouring those universes which best reproduce. . . . Smolin is one of the leading cosmologists at work today, and he writes with an expertise and a force of argument that will command attention throughout the world of physics.'  Amazon   back

Zee, Anthony, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press 2003 Amazon book description: 'An esteemed researcher and acclaimed popular author takes up the challenge of providing a clear, relatively brief, and fully up-to-date introduction to one of the most vital but notoriously difficult subjects in theoretical physics. A quantum field theory text for the twenty-first century, this book makes the essential tool of modern theoretical physics available to any student who has completed a course on quantum mechanics and is eager to go on. Quantum field theory was invented to deal simultaneously with special relativity and quantum mechanics, the two greatest discoveries of early twentieth-century physics, but it has become increasingly important to many areas of physics. These days, physicists turn to quantum field theory to describe a multitude of phenomena. Stressing critical ideas and insights, Zee uses numerous examples to lead students to a true conceptual understanding of quantum field theory--what it means and what it can do. He covers an unusually diverse range of topics, including various contemporary developments,while guiding readers through thoughtfully designed problems. In contrast to previous texts, Zee incorporates gravity from the outset and discusses the innovative use of quantum field theory in modern condensed matter theory. Without a solid understanding of quantum field theory, no student can claim to have mastered contemporary theoretical physics. Offering a remarkably accessible conceptual introduction, this text will be widely welcomed and used.   Amazon   back

Papers

Bennett, Charles L, Michael S Turner, Martin White, "The Cosmic Rosetta Stone", Physics Today, 50, 11, November 1997, page 32. "Microkelvin variations in the cosmic microwave background encode a wealth of information about the origin and composition of the universe". back

Links

Accountancy - Wikipedia, Accountancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Accountancy is the process of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as shareholders and managers. . . . Accounting is thousands of years old; the earliest accounting records, which date back more than 7,000 years, were found in Mesopotamia (Assyrians). ' back

Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia, Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to designate names to these shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.' back

Aquinas 13, Summa: I 2 3: Whether God exists?, I answer that the existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. . . . The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. . . . The third way is taken from possibility and necessity . . . The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. . . . The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. back

Aquinas 13 (Latin), Summa: I 2 3: Whether God exists?, 'Respondeo dicendum quod Deum esse quinque viis probari potest. Prima autem et manifestior via est, quae sumitur ex parte motus. Certum est enim, et sensu constat, aliqua moveri in hoc mundo. Omne autem quod movetur, ab alio movetur. Nihil enim movetur, nisi secundum quod est in potentia ad illud ad quod movetur, movet autem aliquid secundum quod est actu. Movere enim nihil aliud est quam educere aliquid de potentia in actum, de potentia autem non potest aliquid reduci in actum, nisi per aliquod ens in actu, sicut calidum in actu, ut ignis, facit lignum, quod est calidum in potentia, esse actu calidum, et per hoc movet et alterat ipsum. Non autem est possibile ut idem sit simul in actu et potentia secundum idem, sed solum secundum diversa, quod enim est calidum in actu, non potest simul esse calidum in potentia, sed est simul frigidum in potentia. Impossibile est ergo quod, secundum idem et eodem modo, aliquid sit movens et motum, vel quod moveat seipsum. Omne ergo quod movetur, oportet ab alio moveri. Si ergo id a quo movetur, moveatur, oportet et ipsum ab alio moveri et illud ab alio. Hic autem non est procedere in infinitum, quia sic non esset aliquod primum movens; et per consequens nec aliquod aliud movens, quia moventia secunda non movent nisi per hoc quod sunt mota a primo movente, sicut baculus non movet nisi per hoc quod est motus a manu. Ergo necesse est devenire ad aliquod primum movens, quod a nullo movetur, et hoc omnes intelligunt Deum.' back

Big Bang - Wikipedia, Big Bang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in its present continuously expanding state. According to the most recent measurements and observations, this original state existed approximately 13.7 billion years ago, which is considered the age of the Universe and the time the Big Bang occurred' back

Christian biblical canons - Wikipedia, Christian biblical canons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A Christian biblical canon is the set of books that a Christian denomination regards as divinely inspired and thus constituting a Christian Bible. Although the Early Church primarily used the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament, or LXX) or the Targums among Aramaic speakers, the apostles did not leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead the canon of the New Testament developed over time.' back

Cosmology - Wikipedia, Cosmology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order. Modern cosmology is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which brings together observational astronomy and particle physics.' back

Development of the Hebrew Bible canon - Wikpedia, Development of the Hebrew Bible canon - Wikpedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the 24 books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, as authoritative. Modern scholarship suggests that the most recently written are the books of Jonah, Lamentations, and Daniel, all of which may have been composed as late as the second century BCE.' back

Fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, Fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a fixed point theorem is a result saying that a function F will have at least one fixed point (a point x for which F(x) = x), under some conditions on F that can be stated in general terms. Results of this kind are amongst the most generally useful in mathematics. The Banach fixed point theorem gives a general criterion guaranteeing that, if it is satisfied, the procedure of iterating a function yields a fixed point. By contrast, the Brouwer fixed point theorem is a non-constructive result: it says that any continuous function from the closed unit ball in n-dimensional Euclidean space to itself must have a fixed point, but it doesn't describe how to find the fixed point (See also Sperner's lemma).' back

General relativity - Wikipedia, General relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916.[1] It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalises special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the four-momentum (mass-energy and linear momentum) of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations.' back

Genesis, The Book of Genesis, 'Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the first section of the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures. Its title in English, “Genesis,” comes from the Greek of Gn 2:4, literally, “the book of the generation (genesis) of the heavens and earth.” Its title in the Jewish Scriptures is the opening Hebrew word, Bereshit, “in the beginning.”' back

Georg Cantor - Wikipedia, Georg Cantor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (March 3 [O.S. February 19] 1845[1] – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician, born in Russia. He is best known as the creator of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are "more numerous" than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantor's theorem implies the existence of an "infinity of infinities". He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact of which he was well aware' back

Information theory - Wikipedia, Information theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Historically, information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on compressing and reliably storing and communicating data. Since its inception it has broadened to find applications in many other areas, including statistical inference, natural language processing, cryptography generally, networks other than communication networks — as in neurobiology, the evolution and function of molecular codes, model selection in ecology, thermal physics, quantum computing, plagiarism detection and other forms of data analysis.' back

Initial singularity - Wikipedia, Initial singularity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The initial singularity was the gravitational singularity of infinite density thought to have contained all of the mass and spacetime of the Universe before quantum fluctuations caused it to rapidly expand in the Big Bang and subsequent inflation, creating the present-day Universe.' back

Introduction to general relativity - Wikipedia, Introduction to general relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'General relativity (GR) is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915. According to general relativity, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from their warping of space and time. . . . Although general relativity is not the only relativistic theory of gravity, it is the simplest such theory that is consistent with the experimental data. Nevertheless, a number of open questions remain, the most fundamental of which is how general relativity can be reconciled with the laws of quantum physics to produce a complete and self-consistent theory of quantum gravity.' back

John Palmer - Parmenides, Parmenides (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), First published Fri Feb 8, 2008 ' Immediately after welcoming Parmenides to her abode, the goddess describes as follows the content of the revelation he is about to receive: You must needs learn all things,/ both the unshaken heart of well-rounded reality/ and the notions of mortals, in which there is no genuine trustworthiness./ Nonetheless these things too will you learn, how what they resolved/ had actually to be, all through all pervading. (Fr. 1.28b-32) ' back

Measurement - Wikipedia, Measurement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Measurement is the process or the result of determining the ratio of a physical quantity, such as a length, time, temperature etc., to a unit of measurement, such as the meter, second or degree Celsius. The science of measurement is called metrology.' back

NASA, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), 'The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe is a NASA explorer mission measuring the temperature of the cosmic background radiation with unprecedented accuracy. This map of the remnant heat from the Big Bang provides answers to fundamental questions about the origin and fate of our universe.' back

Number - Wikipedia, Number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers. . . . The study of numerical operations is called arithmetic. A notational symbol that represents a number is called a numeral. In addition to their use in counting and measuring, numerals are often used for labels (telephone numbers), for ordering (serial numbers), and for codes (e.g., ISBNs). In common use, the word number can mean the abstract object, the symbol, or the word for the number.' back

Planck constant - Wikipedia, Planck constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Planck constant (denoted h), also called Planck's constant, is a physical constant reflecting the sizes of energy quanta in quantum mechanics. It is named after Max Planck, one of the founders of quantum theory, who discovered it in 1900. . . . Planck discovered that physical action could not take on any indiscriminate value. Instead, the action must be some multiple of a very small quantity (later to be named the "quantum of action" and now called Planck's constant).' back

Planck scale - Wikipedia, Planck scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, In particle physics and physical cosmology, the Planck scale is an energy scale around GeV (corresponding to the Planck mass) at which quantum effects of gravity become strong. At this scale, the description of sub-atomic particle interactions in terms of quantum field theory breaks down (due to the non-renormalizability of gravity). That is; although physicists have a fairly good understanding of the other fundamental interactions or forces on the quantum level, gravity is problematic, and cannot be integrated with quantum mechanics (at high energies) using the usual framework of quantum field theory. . . . ' back

Plato, Parmenides, 'Parmenides By Plato Written 370 B.C.E Translated by Benjamin Jowett Persons of the Dialogue CEPHALUS ADEIMANTUS GLAUCON ANTIPHON PYTHODORUS SOCRATES ZENO PARMENIDES ARISTOTELES Scene Cephalus rehearses a dialogue which is supposed to have been narrated in his presence by Antiphon, the half-brother of Adeimantus and Glaucon, to certain Clazomenians. back

Quantum field theory - Wikipedia, Quantum field theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Quantum field theory (QFT) provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically described by fields or (especially in a condensed matter context) of many-body systems. . . . In QFT photons are not thought of as 'little billiard balls', they are considered to be field quanta - necessarily chunked ripples in a field that 'look like' particles. Fermions, like the electron, can also be described as ripples in a field, where each kind of fermion has its own field. In summary, the classical visualisation of "everything is particles and fields", in quantum field theory, resolves into "everything is particles", which then resolves into "everything is fields". In the end, particles are regarded as excited states of a field (field quanta). back

Robert K Englund, Proto-Cuneiform Account-Books and Journals, in Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch, eds., Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping, Standardization and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East (CDL Press: Bethesda, Maryland, USA) pp. 23-46. back

Rolf Landauer, Information is a Physical Entity, 'Abstract: This paper, associated with a broader conference talk on the fundamental physical limits of information handling, emphasizes the aspects still least appreciated. Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation, thus tying it to all the restrictions and possibilities of our real physical universe. The mathematician's vision of an unlimited sequence of totally reliable operations is unlikely to be implementable in this real universe. Speculative remarks about the possible impact of that, on the ultimate nature of the laws of physics are included.' back

Sampling (signal processing) - Wikipedia, Sampling (signal processing) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave (a continuous signal) to a sequence of samples (a discrete-time signal).' back

Standard model - Wikipedia, Standard model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory that describes three of the four known fundamental interactions between the elementary particles that make up all matter. It is a quantum field theory developed between 1970 and 1973 which is consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity. To date, almost all experimental tests of the three forces described by the Standard Model have agreed with its predictions. However, the Standard Model falls short of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions, primarily because of its lack of inclusion of gravity, the fourth known fundamental interaction, but also because of the large number of numerical parameters (such as masses and coupling constants) that must be put "by hand" into the theory (rather than being derived from first principles) . . . ' back

The National Academies, Cosmology: A Research Briefing, 'Cosmologists work to understand how the universe came into being, why it looks as it does now, and what the future holds. They make astronomical observations that probe billions of years into the past, to the edge of the knowable universe. They seek the bases of scientific understanding, using the tools of modern physics, and fashion theories that provide unified and testable models of the evolution of the universe from its creation to the present, and into the future.' back

Unified field theory - Wikipedia, Unified field theory - Wikipedia, the fre encyclopedia, 'In physics, a unified field theory is a type of field theory that allows all of the fundamental forces between elementary particles to be written in terms of a single field. There is no accepted unified field theory yet, and this remains an open line of research. The term was coined by Albert Einstein who attempted to unify the general theory of relativity with electromagnetism. A Theory of Everything is closely related to unified field theory, but differs by not requiring the basis of nature to be fields, and also attempts to explain all physical constants of nature . . . ' back

Vacuum - Wikipedia, Vacuum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'According to modern understanding, even if all matter could be removed from a volume, it would still not be "empty" due to vacuum fluctuations, dark energy, transiting gamma- and cosmic rays, neutrinos, along with other phenomena in quantum physics. In modern particle physics, the vacuum state is considered as the ground state of matter.' back