Chapter 5 Summary
Wrap-up
The coming of quantum physics and relativity leave us in no doubt that the
realism of classical physics has gone forever. It has been replaced by
something that at first blush is quite mysterious -to science
and commonsense alike. Faced by this embarrassment, science should
have reacted by seeking to recover as much of a quotidian realism as was
consistent with the discoveries themselves. But this was not at all what
happened.
Instead, it was to retreat into mystification; what was directly
given as puzzling was accepted at face value. For a start, the Copenhagen
exegesis of 'observership' physics must have bishop Berkeley turning in his
grave, while Einstein's insistence that the Minkowski manifold be elevated from
epistemic to ontic status demands that everyday 'process'
time be replaced by its bastard 'manifold' counterpart. This Minkowski
floor upon which Physical Reality henceforth obliged to take its stand is something very
hard for commonsense to take seriously in its own right, quite apart from its
damaging implications over the authenticity of the human persona.
However, as I seek to demonstrate in this chapter and more particularly the one
which follows, a neorealism, fully consistent with all of the putatively
mysterious empirical discoveries-
can be defined. And it turns out to be something to which an enlightened
commonsense has no difficulty in adapting itself to, becoming all the richer and
more satisfying in the process of accommodation. So, why hasn't the intellectual taken to
following this course? Surely, it ought to have been adopted as the
default position, in an acknowledgement of some variant of Occam's razor -urging
that other things being equal, the more quotidian of two alternatives should
always be opted for.
Here's one reason. Physics isn't being done by physicists any more, but by mathematicians. As a
result, form no longer adorns substance, instead replacing it altogether. There has been a
retreat into phenomenalism. Henceforth, physics is about physics rather
than about physical reality. I would insist that I'm not quibbling with
words here. Certainly, the physicist must be a competent mathematician,
but this should come second. The difference between the two postures is
the mind-set which each brings with it. The physicist will come to
entertain ideas about the nature of Reality and what remains to be discovered
'out there' that would never have occurred to a
mathematician, and they will be more likely to be born out. In a nutshell,
this is precisely the difference between a Bohm and a Heisenberg.
Mystification has a positive appeal to
the Mainstream scientific
intellectual for the way in which it helps fill the aching void left by his
dispatch of the realm of Transcendence. Intuitions of a larger Eternal
domain are too strong to be denied access. In consequence, they
contrive to surface in any way that they can -of which the proneness to
mystification is but one example Another is the physicist's fascination
with science fiction -particularly when it comes to 'time travel', with all of
its daunting paradoxes. Transcendence having been dispatched, perhaps
mode of transportation might serve provide some kind of eschatological trap door
Finally, there is just plain muddle The intellectual has lost his grasp on the
distinction between physics and metaphysics. He imagines that he has
done away with the latter, but this is not so. If you're into physics you're
into metaphysics. As Bohm points out, those who deny metaphysics end up
exercising it -in the worst possible way. Metaphysics is legitimate
and necessary business; it should be pursued, provided one is always clear about
which of the two is being exercised at any one time.
One
way and another, as the home page of this website has already made clear, physics, marching under the banner of a credo of secular
positivism, has become a cult with all of the trappings of 'religion' of which
the intellectuals so congratulate themselves of having done away with. For
more on this, go to
Positivism
The way in which one does physics (or science in general) is very much -and
quite properly- a function of (usually) unspoken cognitive intuitions about how
the world is put together. Those in evidence today are part and parcel of
a Western
tradition that has been many centuries in the making. Following is a
typical set of today's default preferences expressed in terms of inequalities:
Form >
Substance
Arithmetic > Geometry
Space > Time
Symmetry > Chirality
One consequence is that the mountain of Relativity is required to come to
the Mohammed of quantum physics and to the showers of particles that are
constantly being vomited
from it -in Nature's incorrigible dyspepsia. Already, three centuries ago,
Newton found himself to be repelled by the notion of 'action at a distance' that
his theory of gravitation seemed to call for. The intellectual is only happy
when there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place.
This chapter also includes a summary of particle physics.
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