Re: modern physics

[Howard Pattee <***>]

I have the feeling  from the comments that have appeared on this list that many 
contributors have simply inherited Rosen's opinions about physics without really studying 
the culture of physics that has evolved during the last 50 years. There have been great 
changes that I myself have not kept up with, but fortunately I still have colleagues who 
do, and there are excellent popular accounts written by experts.

Let me very briefly outline the "artificial rules that physics sets for itself" that 
Judith says Rosen "deplored." That was his emotional response, but I think that is too 
strong a word to represent his rational assessment. Physics is a big field, so I will 
stick to only the most basic ideas that are themselves still subject to different 
interpretations. As I have pointed out, Rosen thought more as a mathematician than as an 
experimental physicist and quite understandably he focused on the formalisms of physics, 
specifically on state-determined dynamics that he found, quite correctly, to be too 
narrow to cover complex system, especially life. So take note, this is not a criticism of 
Rosen?s relational biology and his many other ideas. It is only about his 
characterization of physics with which most physicists disagree.

First, formal state-determinism is not one of the ?artificial rules? physicists set for 
themselves. Physics today begins with a very broad set of  informal "rules" that are 
better called epistemic principles. They are about what it means to make contact with 
those aspects of reality that we cannot escape, or that appear to be inexorable. They are 
those aspects of reality over which we have no control. They support the ideal of 
objectivity which simply means that these aspects or laws do not change when the 
observers change, nor can they be changed by the observer. These are metaphysical 
principles that although they are supported by rational thought, must ultimately be 
justified by the results of experiments on specific models that satisfy these principles.

The most important class were called invariance principles but now are now called 
symmetry principles because the term better describes the more formal and abstract 
aspects of current models. Symmetry implies many subsidiary concepts including 
objectivity, universality, conservation laws, as well as limitations on the formal 
expressions in which the laws are expressed. Einstein was the first to depend primarily 
on a symmetry principle to derive a new law.

The one principle remaining of the Newtonian paradigm in modern physics (?Newton?s 
greatest discovery?) is the necessary complementary duality of laws and measurements (of 
initial conditions). It is important to understand why individual acts of observation and 
measurement cannot satisfy these symmetry conditions. It is because observation and 
measurement are individual acts that, except for the result itself, are largely under the 
control of the observer and depend explicitly on the time, place, and intentions of the 
observer. That is the basic reason why laws cannot usefully describe the process of 
measurement (and why we must make an epistemic cut). In Rosen?s terms, coding 
(measurement) is unentailed by either causal natural laws or the inferential models.

Physical theory has never been about individual measurements of ?parts and particles,? 
their energy, mass, position, etc., but about those invariant relations between such 
observables that do not depend on any actual or conceivable state of the observer. The 
fact that these measurements in themselves have also proved useful knowledge for many 
applied  technologies often gives the layperson a distorted concept of physics.

Of course the whole enterprise of science assumes there is an empirical test of any 
model. The physicist?s symmetry principles do not provide such a test; they are only the 
necessary condition for a model to be a candidate for further tests. The Hertzian  
correspondence condition, or its equivalent, remains the final empirical test of a model. 
Assuming a model satisfies these necessary conditions, many more subjective criteria 
enter into the choice or acceptance of models such as conceptual clarity, formal 
elegance, beauty, unity, simplicity, utility, fecundity, etc.

I have barely scratched the foundations, but I won?t bother you with more. Should anyone 
be interested in more, these books come to mind:

Max Born, Physics in My Generation, Springer-Verlag, 1969. Esp. the essay, ?Symbol and 
Reality? pp. 132-146.

Hallem Stevens, Fundamental physics and its justifications, 1945-1993. Historical Studies 
in the Physical and Biological Sciences 34(1), 151-197, 2003. A study of the real 
struggles of physicists, their internal conflicts about what fields are the most 
important and how they fight for grants.

Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, Vintage Books, 1999 (paperback) A lot of fundamentals 
plus string theory in popular readable form.

Amir Aczel, Entanglement, Plume (Penguin) 2001. All about the bizarre consequences  
quantum theory, delayed-choice and non-locality experiments. Enough to make you doubt you 
know anything about reality.

Howard