A Realist view of logic and physics

 Realism: A Journey through Logic and Physics

“I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical.”

- John Steinbeck 

 

In a time scale of the sun's age we we can confidently say that we have not made the world, compared with the changes achieved by animals and plants. Yet we have created a new kind of artifact which promises in time to work changes in our corner of the world as great as those worked by our predecessors, the oxygen-producing plants or the islanding building corals. These new products, which are decidedly of our own making, are our myths, our ideas, especially our scientific theories: theories about the world we live in. 

I suggest that we may look upon these myths, these ideas, and theories as some of the most characteristic products of human activity ( as said by Karl Popper).  They are organs evolving outside our skins per se these are exosomatic artifacts. 

Thus we may count among these characteristics products especially what is call " human knowledge" where we take the word 'knowledge' in the objective or impersonal sense, in which it may be contained in a book, stored in a library, or in the internet. 

" Knowledge produced by a person is analogous to honey produced by bees". Bees produce, store, and consume honey, but typically, a bee does not just eat the honey it has produced. Drones, which don't make any honey, also consume it, and bees can lose their stored honey to bears or beekeepers. Interestingly, worker bees need to consume honey, often made by other bees to maintain their ability to produce honey.

This concept largely applies, with minor differences, to oxygen-producing plants and theory-producing humans. Like bees with honey, we are both producers and consumers of theories. We must consume others' theories and occasionally our own to continue generating theories. Here, 'to consume' primarily means 'to digest,' similar to bees. However, it extends further: consuming theories involves critiquing, altering, and often dismantling them to make way for better ones. These processes are essential for the advancement of our knowledge.

Humans produce not only scientific theories but also a variety of other ideas, such as religious or poetic myths and friction. What distinguishes a scientific theory from a work of fiction? It's not just that theories might be true while fictional stories are not, though truth and falsehood are relevant. The key difference is that theories and stories are embedded in different critical traditions. They are judged by distinct traditional standards, despite having some commonalities. 

A scientific theory is characterized by its purpose as a solution to a scientific problem. This problem may have emerged from previous critical discussions of tentative theories or may have been discovered by the theory's author within the realm of scientific problems and solutions. However, this is not the whole picture. The scientific tradition, until recently, has been defined by what can be termed scientific realism. This means it was driven by the idea of finding true solutions to its problems that correspond to the facts. This regulative ideal of seeking theories that match facts is what makes the scientific tradition a realist one. It differentiates between the realm of our theories and the realm of facts to which these theories pertain. Furthermore, the natural sciences, with their critical methods of problem-solving, and some social sciences like history and economics, have long represented our best efforts in problem-solving and fact-finding. By fact-finding, I mean discovering statements or theories that correspond to facts. Thus, these sciences generally contain the best statements and theories from the standpoint of truth, providing the best descriptions of the world of facts, or what we call 'reality'.

Emergence from reduction

Physics and chemistry, which deal with physical things and states, are closely related. Chemistry’s inapplicability at extreme temperatures suggests it may be reducible to physics—a significant scientific achievement, fostering unity and understanding. Assuming chemistry is fully reduced to physics, we might hope to similarly reduce biology to physics. However, living organisms differ fundamentally from non-living things, making this reduction more challenging. While progress in understanding the origin of life and creating primitive organisms may occur, true reduction requires more than control over processes. It demands theoretical integration, comprehending the new field through the principles of the old one.

The reduction of chemistry to physics, seemingly progressing well, can be seen as a prime example of a true scientific reduction that meets all the criteria for a robust scientific explanation. A 'good' or 'scientific' reduction is a process through which we gain significant insights: we come to understand and explain the theories of the field being reduced (chemistry in this case) and we also learn about the capabilities of the theories from the reducing field (physics in this instance).

I term "bad reduction" or "ad hoc reduction" as the method of reducing concepts through mere linguistic maneuvers. For instance, physicalism, which proposes the ad hoc existence of physiological states to explain behavior previously explained by mental states (without such ad hoc postulation), is an example. Another example is the linguistic device of claiming to describe a physiological state when stating that one understands the Schrödinger equation. This second type of reduction, or misuse of Ockham's razor, is problematic because it obscures the real issue. As Imre Lakatos vividly describes, it is a "degenerating problem shift" that can hinder either a good reduction or the study of emergence, or both.

Thought process and understanding

Supporting the emergent nature of theories or knowledge in an objective sense. I'll mention a few arguments against the naive and popular view that theories can be reduced to the mental states of those who create or understand them. (We won't discuss whether these mental states can, in turn, be reduced to physical states.) The notion that a theory in its objective or logical sense can be reduced to the mental states of those who hold it is typically framed as the theory simply being a thought. However, this is a fundamental mistake: it fails to distinguish between two meanings of the word 'thought'. Subjectively, 'thought' refers to a mental experience or process. But two mental experiences or processes, while possibly causally related, cannot be logically related. 

For example, if I say that certain ideas of the Buddha align with those of Schopenhauer or contradict those of Nietzsche, I'm not referring to the mental thought processes of these individuals or their interactions. Conversely, if I say Nietzsche was influenced by Schopenhauer's ideas, I mean that Nietzsche's thought processes were causally affected by his reading of Schopenhauer. Therefore, we have two distinct realms: the realm of thought processes and the realm of the products of thought processes. The former may be causally related, while the latter are logically related. The incompatibility of certain theories is a logical fact, independent of whether anyone has recognized or understood this incompatibility. These objective logical relationships define the entities I call theories or knowledge in the objective sense. 

This distinction is evident when considering that the creators of theories often do not fully understand them. For instance, it could be argued that Erwin Schrödinger did not fully understand his own equation until Max Born provided a statistical interpretation; or that Kepler did not fully comprehend his own area law, which he reportedly disliked. Understanding a theory is akin to an infinite task, suggesting that a theory is never completely understood, although some may grasp certain theories very well. 

Understanding a theory is similar to understanding a human personality: we may predict a person's behavior in various situations but cannot fully understand all their possible responses due to the infinite variety of potential situations. Similarly, a full understanding of a theory would require grasping all its logical consequences, which are infinite. Thus, no one, not even its creator, can fully comprehend all the possibilities within a theory, highlighting that theories, in their logical sense, are objective entities that we can study and attempt to understand. It is no more paradoxical to say that theories or ideas are our creations yet not fully understood by us than to say that our children are our creations yet not fully understood by us, or that honey is a product of bees yet not fully understood by any bee.

Realism and physics

In modern physics, subjectivism has become integral in two key areas: Boltzmann's theory of entropy (the arrow of time) and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which define a minimum limit on the observer's influence over the observed object. Einstein also introduced subjectivity when he included the observer in various thought experiments aimed at elucidating relativity, but he subsequently removed the observer from this domain over time.

The Heisenberg formula for energy is independent of both wave mechanics and Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. It also does not rely on commutation relations. Surprisingly, it does not stem from the revolutionary quantum mechanics of 1925-1926 but directly derives from Planck's earlier quantum postulate from 1900.

The interpretation proposed here suggests viewing Heisenberg's uncertainty principles as statistical scatter relations rather than indicators of the precision of measurements or limits to our knowledge. In this view, the principles don't speak directly to the precision of measurements but rather to the limits of homogeneity in quantum-physical states, indirectly addressing predictability. 

For instance, the formula Δ𝑝⋅Δ𝑞 ≈ ℎ implies that upon determining the coordinate 𝑥 of a system, such as an electron, the momentum 𝑝 will scatter upon repetition of the experiment. This assertion can be tested by conducting a series of experiments with a fixed shutter opening Δ𝑥, measuring the momentum 𝑝​ in each case. If the measured momenta scatter as predicted, the formula survives the test. Notably, these experiments require measuring 𝑝 with a precision greater than Δ𝑝, as otherwise, speaking of Δ𝑝 ​ as the scatter of 𝑝 ​ wouldn't make sense. Such experiments are routinely conducted in physical laboratories, challenging the interpretation of Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle. While Heisenberg acknowledged the possibility of such measurements, he deemed attaching meaning to them a matter of personal belief or taste, leading to their disregard as meaningless. 

However, they serve a specific purpose: testing the formulae themselves as scatter relations. This perspective argues against accepting Heisenberg's or Bohr's subjectivist interpretation of quantum mechanics, suggesting instead that quantum mechanics is a statistical theory suited to solving statistical problems, such as spectral intensities. As such, there's no philosophical need to defend its non-causal character.

There's no reason to doubt the realism and objectivity of physics. In modern physics, the observer's role remains similar to that in classical physics – primarily testing theories. This process involves evaluating competing and auxiliary theories, highlighting that we are not so much observers as thinkers.

Realism in logic

Logic, in essence, can be seen as the theory of deduction or derivability. It involves transmitting truth from premises to conclusions, as seen in proofs, and transmitting falsity from conclusions back to premises, as seen in disproofs or rebuttals. In critical discussions, logic is frequently used to challenge assertions by demonstrating their falsehood. If a conclusion is shown to be false, and the inference is assumed to be valid, it follows that at least one premise must be false. Thus, criticism becomes a vital methodological tool. Rejecting criticism by dismissing the logic used undermines the effectiveness of critical discussion. Logic serves two main purposes: in demonstrative sciences like mathematics, it's primarily used for proofs, while in empirical sciences, it's predominantly employed for critical analysis to uncover falsity. Although applied mathematics plays a role in empirical sciences, its significance is somewhat questionable in various aspects.

The rationalist view is characterized by its realist perspective on logic. Firstly, it associates logic with the methodology of the natural sciences, which the rationalist view considers to be grounded in realism. Secondly, it emphasizes logical inference as a process of transmitting truth or retransmitting falsity, thus highlighting the importance of truth in logical reasoning.

Theories of Truth

There are three main theories of truth. The oldest, the correspondence theory, posits that truth corresponds to the facts or accurately describes them, as Tarski emphasized. The coherence theory views truth as coherence with existing knowledge, while the pragmatic theory defines truth in terms of its practical utility or usefulness.

The coherence theory encompasses various interpretations, two of which are notable. The first posits truth as coherence with our beliefs, implying that a statement is true if it aligns with our existing beliefs. However, this approach raises concerns about integrating beliefs into logic due to potential logical constraints conflicting with individual beliefs. The second version suggests that an uncertain statement should be deemed true if it aligns with previously accepted statements, fostering a highly conservative approach to knowledge preservation. Contrastingly, the pragmatic utility theory focuses on the utility of theories in natural sciences, particularly physics. It suggests that a physical theory should be accepted as true if it proves pragmatically useful and successful in tests and applications.

Questions and interpretations???

Eliminating verbal or definitional questions, considering them as pseudo-questions. Questions like "What is life?", "What is matter?", "What is mind?", or "What is logic?" are viewed as unfruitful. They advocate discarding the question "What is truth?" for two main reasons. First, they reject essentialism, and second, they advise against discussing the meaning of words, likening it to a game that philosophers are addicted to but which they consider unimportant.

Incorporating the concept of verisimilitude or approximation to truth into logic enhances its realism by enabling discussion of how one theory aligns better with real-world facts than another. From a realist perspective, logic serves as the tool for criticism rather than proof in our quest for true and highly informative theories. Criticism becomes the primary instrument for advancing our knowledge about the factual world, aiming to promote the growth of our understanding by refining and improving upon existing theories.

This article is inspired from the works of Sir Karl Popper, Wolfgang Yourgrau, Allen D Breck

This is a distant part of model theory - https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2022/01/mt1-model-theory-how-does-our-brain.html   and https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2022/05/empiricism-and-rationalism.html .

Hope this article inspires you. 

Contact me through my blog or https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

- J John Paul

Model of scientific framework

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. 

-Carl Sagan

 

This article is not a technical account. This is an attempt to understand the fundamental sciences (Physical science, chemical science, and biological science) as models of different ideas and concepts. As this is an amateur (lay) approach to these concepts any ideas or thoughts might need to be better formalized.

This is also a continuation of the "Model theory" (click here, click here) whose main objective is to understand how we think and understand things.

This is divided into four parts. A minuscule introduction to all the parts is provided in this blog. A detailed explanation of each piece will be dealt with at a later time. 

Part - 1:  Physical science

Physical science in short is the study of the fundamental ideas of non-living things. If forms the basis of all other sciences. most of the physical science is based on the mathematical formulation and the physical certainty of things around us. It broadly involves the study of the universe through cosmology, the study of atoms by quantum mechanics, the study of moving bodies by classical mechanics, the study of an ensemble of particles by statistical mechanics, the study of energy through thermodynamics, the study of subatomic particles by electrodynamics and so on. Almost everything in science can be understood through the basis and approaches of physical science. 

Part - 2: Chemical science

Chemical science is the study of materials and their properties thus it gives a good understanding of the material universe. It uses the concepts of physical science to understand how materials combine, how they exist, and how they are formed and modified. In a very broad view, they have three different branches; Organic chemistry - deals with the study of compounds that are mostly made up of carbon and hydrogen as a base otherwise an organic compound. ; Physical chemistry - deals with the study of chemical systems with the help of the concepts of physics (A specific study of chemical systems using physics). ; Inorganic chemistry - deals with the study of all other

chemical species that don't have a carbon-hydrogen compound.  Thus chemical science deals with the composition of substances and their properties and reactions.

Part - 3:  Biological science

Biological science is a bit complex field to understand. it's like a living being studying a living being. In a formal way, it is the study of life. It has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, it is a coherent field. It is a complex blend of the above two parts and other significant small parts. Medicine is one of the most important applications of biological science. Chemically it is the atoms, molecules, water, organic compounds, and macromolecules; signaling, Inheritance, development, and self-sustaining. We can always apply any science we discover to study life. It is difficult to give a short technical overview of biological science. In a codified manner, it is the study of us. 

Part 4: Model of  system

The above parts can be combined and put under the same roof which is generally call them as natural science which is the study of everything around us. As scientifically sound, we are able to combine them all into a single system and understand things in a related way.  Mostly this model of system can be a base for engineering like mechanical, civil, biotechnology, chemical, electrical, electronics, etc. This model of system is not a constant

system it is a feedback system so as far as we know the physical world exists because the system flows in and out of itself. The way of thinking and understanding it is a task that should be provided with time, thought, and information from which we can have an emergence. 

This is inspired by the work of  Barbara Minto (Pyramid Principle), N. Seshagiri, Richard Feynman, Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory), and others. 

This is an open problem to think about and analyze. My views and thoughts will be shared at a later time after getting some experience. 

HOPE YOU LEARNT A NEW THING AND CHANGE THE WAY OF LOOKING AROUND YOU.

If you have any questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page to discuss this.  https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

Empiricism and Rationalism

 Empiricism and Rationalism - A connection to Model theory

“I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, and location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.”

 ― Rene Descartes

Why should we know the words Empiricism and Rationalism? People have a very different views of the world. No same person can have the same thought over a thing they observe. The approach to the emergence of thought in the homo mind follows two independent ways of process. Those ways are Empiricism and Rationalism. We humans are concerned with knowledge. Once there was a battle between these two processes but due to the emergence of the human mind now we can use this process to explain how now think and how one can have the grand knowledge of Mundus. It does not judge a mind rather it expands the mind to join with like-minded people and to understand the persona mind.

Empiricism

The word Empirical is the Greek word "empīricus" which means "based on observation". Now many things in a chaotic mind will find a link at least for minds like me. So in simple words the process of Empiricism states we process our knowledge by observation. For better understanding, we can say that we gain knowledge only by the materialistic observations that we make. To make sense of this process we need to go back to our childhood. When something is introduced to a child, the child takes it plays with it, grabs it, sees it, bites it, and does many things until it gets a sense of what it is basically the child scans the thing given to him or her. So when a teddy is given to a child it scans it and forms a model of the teddy in the mind and gets a piece of knowledge about the toy.

Rationalism 

The word rational is the Latin word "rationalis" which means " in accordance with reason and logic". The reason is simple logic and logic is a mind game that everyone performs. This logic makes us the 6 sense living entity. So the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. To understand it let us take an example, As a youth, we learn to handle money, we have a piece of prior information about money management from our parents, elders, and books. During a crisis, one can't spend the money just like that so one should make mental calculations and see which result will be suitable for him or her. So this is based on logic it is a rationalist way of linking the information and gaining the knowledge.

A deeper understanding of Empiricism and Rationalism

In the beginning, the Empirical process of gaining information is seen to be correlated with common sense. Since we see and feel the things around us and know about them. It becomes obvious that we gain knowledge from an empirical process. One thing we do know is that our senses sometimes mislead us. White walls can appear yellow in strong sunlight. Surgeons can stimulate one's brain so that one “sees” a patch of red that isn’t there. One can have hippopotamus dreams, and so on. "My sense experiences are at least sometimes created by my mind – or somehow in my mind. These comparatively rare “mistakes” have led many philosophers to insist that all my perceptions are “mediated”. Ultimately there is a greater consequence of this thought process which believes that only we exist and nothing else exists.

Comming to Rasitionlist's way of thinking makes the knowledge very unique. It is not that the rationalist creates knowledge in their mental state rather they join the information through logic and make it a piece of unique information. It seems that rationalism is a process followed by the polymaths and the selected ones but in reality the freedom of logic makes us what we are so, we all have a piece of rationalist thinking. This rationalist process has a blasting negative consequence, As a rationalist is a mental person he or she will gain a god complex out of his or her powerful capacity to link and create knowledge. 

Finally...

This discussion is not over but has started, From this much we should understand how we are. Personally the concept of "unknown knowable mind - consciousness" still remains a private room in each of our minds and the rationalist process of gaining knowledge will help us to gain knowledge about this private room. 

No matter how much we know about wave-lengths of light and human sensory perception, science seems unable to describe or explain the total uniqueness of our perceptual experiences or “qualia”

DO VISIT THE ARCHIVE TO EXPLORE MORE 

Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

 

MT1: Model theory- How does our brain know things?

 Model theory

How does our brain know things 

"We live in a medium of complexity which was simple at the beginning and will be simple at the end"

 

According to the Oxford English dictionary model means "Something which accurately resembles or represents something else, esp. on a small scale". This word is in greater usage since the 1950s in various forms and meanings. But my focus is on the meaning mentioned above. The word itself is derived from a Latin word meaning modulus which essentially denotes a measure or standard. It is very essential to understand this basic definition of the model to read further.

From the time we have born many things are fed to our minds. As we grow those things take a very different shape in terms of understanding. Now my question is how our brain does it? How we receive things and how we manipulate them and give them many add-ons. 

To understand what I am saying let us take an example. All of us know what a stone is. Now if I ask you to describe a stone what will be your answer?  Generally, anyone will think of it as a solid object, rigid, strong, irregular in shape, and many more characteristic features of it. So these things will run in one's mind. Now If I show a thing like a lump of white powder what you may think about it. Again some more things will run on your mind. It may coincide with your thinking of stone but I am not sure. Now I say this lump of stone is called Talc (that we use in facial powder) and some people may know it and some people may not know this fact, now again many things will run in one's mind. The people who know this will confirm this fact and make it a strong feed-in his mind. The people who don't know about it will be a new feed-in and they will partially fill it in their mind.

Here is an analogous concept to understand, We take a photo and save it in our phone, then we take a screenshot and save it in our phone then we edit a photo and save it in our phone for you the photo may be different but in the language of computers, all of them are a set of binary arrays which feed a piece of information which upon extraction or processed will give us what we called as an image. But here is the important thing to note even though all are images each one will store in different files.

Upon understanding the above now we are going to make this a little more complex understanding of models in our brain. Some straight facts to know before proceeding. Our brain is a biological matter, 60% of fat, 75% of water, a network of blood vessels over 100,000 miles long, many different chemicals, elements like potassium, sodium, calcium, chlorine which cause electrical activity and many gray things are present in our brain. So simply speaking it is a very complex structure made up of very simple and elementary things present in the world. 

As a child when we look at a stone we feel it in many ways, we touch it, we see it, we may sometimes feel pain from it by getting hit. So we developed an idea about it. At those times the neurons (if you don't know search in google) fire and store information about it in our brain. Now my problem arises in this part itself. Neurons are a bunch of electrical signals so they are charge carriers by the nature of physics. Now think of this logic, if you want to store something that will occupy space let it be anything from words to tons of steel it requires some physical space. Now come to the brain if there are charge carriers mostly it will be electrons, as we know electrons are very small physical objects that make matter so they occupy space. Now my doubt should be clear to you. If the information about the stone is stored in my brain how it is stored where it is stored and in what form it is stored? This is my first set of problems.

Now let's proceed with this abstract idea that the overall information is stored in the brain. As a child I know something about stone as a physical object now an I grow I will see many things about stone like its types, more precise images, more uses of stone, and more. Now what I think is that this information will be stored along with the pre-existing memory of stone but my initial or the first information of stone will eventually fade off and now we will have a well-defined structure and the idea of stone. I.e. there will be a great difference between a child's idea of stone and a man's idea of stone but here again one doubt how the information is manipulated and how it is taking its form? Does it have an algorithm or something?

The above questions are not complete there are more questions to ask but for now, it is enough to proceed with my exploration and explanation of my model theory. 

Idea altiore of Model theory

This is not a well explained or a well-explored conclusion but it is the beginning of something. The main idea is that we people receive or feed the information in our minds using various models. So we have a plethora of models in our minds from the smell of our mother to the exciting view of stares. One of the beauties of these models is that they are perfect and they are not mixed. Each and every model stand-alone and be its own kind and give life to us. And over time the things we see will be fed in the model and it is enhanced in some or other way. Even by seeing a single object, many models are enhanced for instance if you see a diamond the models of color, stones, value, beauty, economy, and many other unique models of your own are enhanced in a mysterious way. So in a simple statement model theory simply say that we humans identify and experience the world around us through models and analyzing those models in my work.

Illustration of brains in brains creating models

NOTE:

• This is just a beginning, not a full work.
• There are many more questions to be asked.
• This will be a long work so will take time to fully develop.
• Do not confuse this with the MODEL THEORY in mathematics this and that is entirely different.
• It is just amateur work for now.  
• If and discussion, I am very much open to it. 

DO VISIT THE ARCHIVE TO EXPLORE MORE 

Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.