The Fundamental Principles of the Universe and the Origin of Physical Laws by Attila Grandpierre

6.5. Clever matter?

How do atoms know the laws of physics? How does the wind know in which way to blow under any given circumstances? It knows this because the power arising from the differential pressure drives it towards areas where the pressure is lower. But why does matter migrate to places with a lower pressure? Because this is prescribed by the laws of physics. Eventually, this is caused by the principle of least action. But then again, how can a principle cause a physical effect? How can a spiritual factor like a principle be able to move matter? This is a question we should attempt to understand. And the ultimate questions of physics is: why are there physical laws at all, and how can any body follow the principle of least action? The answer to these questions is that light travels between two points on the shortest possible route, even if there is a mirror in its way somewhere along its course. But how is light able to select the shortest route? Yes, following the least action principle. When Feynman introduced the method of summing over the path-integrals, he pointed out that in order to be able to follow the principle of least action, light (or any other quantum process) must “virtually” go over all the possible routes, over all the possible histories, and then these add up to the “actual” shortest route. Feynman has put all this into a mathematical formula – but how is it possible that a lifeless and sterile atom can do all that? How can a perfectly abstract atom perceive a principle and behave according to it? Is then a principle such a spiritual factor that is capable of exerting physical effects? Such questions are not asked today since the dominant worldview of scientists is materialism. The typical physicist of our time adopted uncritically a “home-spun philosophy (which) goes by the name operationism. It holds that a symbol, such as an equation, has a physical meaning only to the extent to which it concerns some possible human operations. Which entails that the whole of physics is about operations, chiefly measurements and computations, rather than about nature” (Bunge 1973, 1). Materialism led to a general practice to give up the original aim of science exploring reality and to prefer instead serving the material concepts and constraints of our societies.

These questions raise the problem of the origins of physical laws in a Pythagorean context. In the contemporary materialist view, this problem cannot be accounted for on a scientific basis. But the materialist exclusion of the question of the origin of the physical laws from the scope of science is a refutation of the original aim of science: to understand nature. Science should not declare that it is a scientific taboo to examine the laws of those levels of Nature that are deeper than the physical level. If present-day science does so, we can be sure that that is an unscientific and anti-cognitive, occult attitude.

How can we examine the problem of the origin of physical laws while preserving the aim of science: to understand nature through valid and systematic knowledge?

6.6. The origin of physical laws

From where does the laws of physics arise? Eddington suggested in the frame of the present day scientific views that the maintenance of these laws are not supported by any factor behind these laws, therefore these laws are law-like only as an ultimately improbable chance event. The laws can be present from the beginnings of the Universe only by a chance coincidence of events – it is not possible to exclude the case when from the completely random collisions of atoms an illusion develops. It has to be clear, says Eddington, that from the fact that the stone falls down after a hundred throwings does not necessitate absolutely that the stone will fall down after the 101st throwing. And if it falls down at the end, it is only a mere result of chance again. Therefore, there are no physical laws in the Universe: the apparent lawfulness is a result of an extremely rare ultimate coincidence of random events. Therefore the materialist logic leads to the denial of physical laws which are established already and found reliable by the empirical facts.

I do not think that we can be satisfied with such a description which do not reach the causes and remains in the realm of phenomena only. We cannot live in a world consisting only of chance events. Such a conception would undermine the basis of our personal and communal life conduct. The term “chance” here expresses only that the cause of the phenomenon studied is not known. Therefore, chance cannot explain any phenomena since the term “explain” involves setting up a relation that explains the yet unknown with a known. So we do not think that the interpretation of the origin of physical laws as being the result of a mere chance would explain anything. Now the basic physical principle, the principle of least action is not attempted to be understood as itself being a phenomenon. On the contrary, emphasising the difference between the absolute validity of the physical laws and the awkwardness of human activity suggests that the automatic, mechanistic character of the prevalence of the physical laws implies that atoms could not have free will at all. But is it really true that in the atomic world every event goes on with an absolute necessity? We are far away from thinking it to be true in the realm of physics itself. Not only chaotic phenomena, but more evidently the phenomenon of life is developed with the assistance of atoms. Therefore if life is grown out from the atomic world, then the causal closure of physical causes is actually broken, and the atomic world had to be able to generate the biological laws. These biological laws are able to govern the physical laws within the conditions present in living organisms, which are also generated by the atomic world. Now we have to see that although for a physicist it would not seem necessary, since it does not follow from the laws of physics, in reality the atomic world has to be able to make free decisions, and it realises such free decisions during its activity when the proper conditions are reached. It is an empirical fact that the “decision” made by the atomic world is in favour of development of conditions necessary to life and life itself. And now we can consider the question: is it true that strictly consequent behaviour is possible only by machines?

To be able to answer this question it is necessary to find the proper context. This is needed since it is easy to state that atoms are not alive, since atoms cannot speak to us, and they do not have expert journals indexed by human reference periodicals to officially refute the claim of inanimateness. Moreover we know that Descartes claimed that not only atoms but animals are also inanimate. But we may realise now that there is an essential difference between machines and living organism, namely that organisms have inner motivations which may dominate over the outer conditions, which machines do not have. It is true that it is not easy to demonstrate from an inner motivation that it is truly inner. But the question is settled by the theoretical biology of Ervin Bauer who recognised that living beings follow a deeper organising principle than the inanimate objects. Therefore now it is possible to draw proper conjectures from the fact that the realm of animals is not so far away from us.

6.7. Atomic instincts

Apparently, the governing factor in human consciousness is aware self-consciousness. The self-conscious reason is free in the sense if it is able to decide within certain conditions by its own viewpoints. At the same time, self-consciousness is based on a consciousness-without-self-reflection. This consciousness without self-reflexivity, as nature shows us, possess reason and this is why animals act reasonably, grow and act coherently with their needs. Self-consciousness is only a late offspring of the reasonfull natural consciousness. So our actions are not only governed by self-consciousness, but also by this natural consciousness. We see in the animal kingdom that the behaviour of animals is largely governed by instincts, which appear as universal, almost inevitable motives that move the animals. When compared to humans, it is apparent that the behaviour of animals is governed in a larger extent and degree by instincts than behaviour of the humans. We may recognise that the effect of instincts in human behaviour is not realised with such a strict necessity than at the animals. Now we can observe that as we go away from the human world towards the animal kingdom and more in this direction, we may found that the instincts are stricter in the more primitive animals, and they may be still stricter at plants. When we continue and extend our considerations to the atomic world, the progressive rigidity of instincts seems to be continuing at the atomic world as well. It is reasonable to assume, that the instincts are more stiff in the atomic world, than in the kingdom of plants, animals and humans. This is apparently only a difference in degree, not in substance. Therefore, it seems to be plausible to conjecture that instincts should be the strongest and stiffest in the atomic world.

We reached a conjecture that the atoms are less independent from their own inner drives than humans. This conjecture may also be evaluated in a sense that the atoms show more consequent behaviour than people. Being more consequent, it is easier to describe their behaviour by mathematics. But this does not mean necessarily that they do not “think” and are not able to decide freely within certain conditions proper to them, since they already proved their freedom by developing life and consciousness where they are able to behave more freely. Doing this, they transcended the laws of physics and developed the realms of biology and psychology. The fact that it is possible to describe a phenomenon mathematically does not imply that the entity realising the phenomenon is dead.  For example, it is possible to describe the motion of an animal rolling down of a hill, but this does not imply that the animal is dead.

Therefore, from the fact that the atoms are more consequent than people are, it is not valid to conjecture that atoms are inanimate objects. On the contrary, we can observe that the instincts are demonstrated the most directly and naturally in the behaviour of atoms, especially in a long baseline timeframe. This conjecture opens up a new perspective for the study of the general instincts of Nature. We obtained a solution of a riddle unsolved for thousand years. Both science and religion declared as insoluble or inconceivable the question of the origin of physical laws. Now we obtain an important insight to the nature of this riddle: the physical laws develop as a consequence of phenomena very similar to that of the human world: inner motivations, inner principles are their ultimate movers. Therefore, the origin of physical laws leads us to the inner world of Nature, untouched until now. This is the realm from where the laws of physics arise. In this way we obtained a context of interpretation which instead of separating physics from philosophy, connects them together, and doing this it expands the usual range of scientific investigation.

One may observe that materialism when attempting to cut down any spirituality from the universe, it cuts away itself from being able to understand the origin of physical laws. Atoms are able to follow the laws of physics since they perceive the world of their own instincts. Their bonds to their world are more rigid than that of humans to theirs. Expressing the difference with a metaphor, atoms are small skiffs driven by the flow of the river of their instincts.  Man, in comparison, appears more like a sailing-boat, and bonded also to another principle, it is able to navigate with both drives: the drive of the flow below, and the drive of the wind above. This is why Man is able to proceed less rigidly and faster. But the wind is also the result of the free energy, the heat surplus of the atoms of the river. And the sail of the larger boats is also created by the atoms of the river by their own decisions in this metaphor.

Our considerations suggest that the hypothesis of identical particles of particle physics have to be tested experimentally, suggesting concrete experiments which could explore e.g. how the individual history of large amounts of radioactive materials do influence the radioactive decay of a radioactive element under intense regular laser impulses with strict frequencies occurring in strict periods (E. K. Grandpierre, 2000).

Our result is that the considerations of the origin of physical laws do not led us out from the range of science. On the contrary: our search for the origin of physical laws supplied us a scientific evidence that the range of science extends beyond strict and exclusive materialism, involving not only the sovereignty of biology, psychology and self-consciousness, but reaching as well until philosophy which has to be able to consider the ultimate meaning of the ultimate principles, the archi. Recognising the nature of these archi, we living beings and more or less humans will become able to realise our own deepest nature with clearer and brighter prominence.

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  • Him I call indeed a Brahmana who has traversed this miry road, the impassable world, difficult to pass, and its vanity, who has gone through, and reached the other shore.

     

    - Dhammapada, 26:414