ESSAY SUBMISSION: Towards an Idealist Theory of Everything
Bob Mandeville
Dear Fellow followers of Bernardo Kastrup - who is the only one today who seems to me to merit recognition in both the worlds of Idealist philosophy and mainstream science, I received with gratitude the comments about my essay: “Are Dimensions Imaginary?” and agree that this seemed ill directed for an Idealist philosophical forum. I did, however, benefit hugely by following the different topics on the forum in the months that followed that. I do continue to feel that there is a tremendous job to be done to prise the world view from the dead end that science seems to have brought us to. This could be altered if the language of mathematics (including Wave Mechanics) could be fundamentally disassembled to take into account an Idealist position. Accordingly, I have taken speculation to its logical conclusion (with perhaps grandiose delusions) by developing an Idealist “Theory of Everything” out of the previous material. I hope that I have avoided some of the pitfalls pointed out already and not caused immediate confrontation by equating Universal Consciousness with “Now.” I would try to place the essay elsewhere if I knew anywhere that would accommodate such an outrageously provocative blog - fortunately, I have no reputation to lose as I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher. I ask for your indulgence and manifest open-mindedness in asking you to read this and if there is any residual worth to it, to help to shape it into a form in the public domain that can act positively as a springboard for others to develop, or provoke them to create other approaches.
Bob Mandeville
SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY
The most parsimonious explanation for the universe requires only a consciousness out of which all energy, mass and constants are derived and space-time is constructed. This essay explores an idea that draws on experienced reality, the Now and Always of everyday life, to generate such an Idealist hypothesis while making as few assumptions as possible.
BACKGROUND
Not unexpectedly a delineation for such an explanatory process demands that current concepts be looked at anew. The bedrock of current quantum theory depends on dimensions and their action on hypothetical quanta in quantum wave equations in accordance with experimental results. In contrast, what is proposed in this essay is that quanta are real and it is their action that generates what we perceive as dimensions which are only secondary constructs. The proposal to hold dimensions to be illusory rather than fundamental seems to attack the ancient roots of our understanding of the world around us and perhaps needs to be carefully introduced particularly at a time when the direction of theoretical research seems to be looking for more dimensions rather than none.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
If we take our everyday experience of now, I.e. the present moment, completely out of our lives then immediately we cannot measure anything as we cannot put a beginning and end to a length or select a start and end to a timer. The measures could be a point or a million miles or a million years and we would not know the difference as there would be no measuring points along the way and space-time would become totally unmeasurable. As I discussed in the previous paper the logic of this takes this “Not Now” to be “Always” and it is only when we put “Now” and “Always” back together again that Space-Time once again re-emerges.
It is postulated that “Now” is an eternal quality which comes to generate, enfold and carry a single primordial “quantitye of an hesil nut” (“It is all that is made” - The Shewings of Julian of Norwich Chapter 5) and no explanation is appropriate for this. This is the true beginning but it is not the start of our physical universe. The start comes when the hazelnut quantum is squeezed by its carrying “Now” until it disappears into an imaginary (i.e. mathematically at right angles to “Now”) “Always” and again no explanation is appropriate either. “Always” is not “in” the hazelnut, but carrying it generates a void, an exclusion, that the hazelnut lies in, and this mirrors the void and exclusion involved with the initial “Now.” The pressure from the split “Always” squeezes the hazelnut back into “Now.” However, during this rebounding process the hazelnut itself can be cracked and fragmented.
The ensuing play between Now and Alway, which constitutes the primordial wave function, cascades the break-up of the hazelnut Quanta thereby further splitting up both Now and Always as they accommodate the ever-increasing number of quanta, each iteration generating yet more fragmentation. The pulverisation of Quanta adds increasing Now points of transition to the Always thereby creating space-time and the continuing expansion of our universe. This fragmentation of Quanta shows up as increasing entropy with the squeeze from Now driving the whole process fulfilling the second law of thermodynamics and the arrow of time.
The quanta are given character by their supporting carriers: those carried by Now are energy quanta whereas those carried by Always are mass quanta. These quanta are related to each other by the composition of the constant “c” which expresses their space-time relation (the surface area of the Now sphere from the Always radius). The expansion proceeds comparatively slowly until at a certain point the energy quanta can start to associate with the mass quanta perhaps catalysed by the Higgs Boson allowing those to aggregate to make the first forms of particle and at a stroke the whole “crystallises” with a massive expansion of the universe from the enhanced break up of quanta and the permanent stabilisation of mass which is reflected in the numbers of new potential N/A transitions: - inflation.
The power of this narrative is that it gives a glimpse at some of the mysteries of our universe: - quantisation, origins of the “big bang,” the relationship of mass and energy, the driving force for expansion, inflation, the composition of space-time, immanence/transcendence, etc., rather than the stock reply of: “It is what it is.” This is done at the cost of the loss of our familiar dimensions of height, length, depth and time which are replaced by the mathematically unfamiliar Now and Always with degrees of freedom in direction and rotation.
RATIONALE
As was delineated in the previous essay we already know about Fermionic exclusion from the Pauli Principle applied to the energy shells of electrons around atoms. Richard Feynman is reported to have said that within current physical models we really do not understand this effect which is central to the operation of atoms. However, in this hypothesis the particles would be carried and defined by the excluded Now and other particles of the same energy and spin would thereby be excluded. If we extend and extrapolate with the application of symmetry, quanta of mass must also exclude the carrying Always but the logic says that this exclusion would be manifest radially. The exclusion of Always by mass would be marked by what we can term a “Symmetrical Pauli Exclusion” of expression of other mass quanta radially.
Using this extrapolation, quanta of energy would then be defined by exclusion of Now perceived by us as moving spherical wavefronts demonstrating non-locality whereas the quanta of mass would have coordinates and would be defined by exclusion of Always radially. The exclusion of Always by Mass could be expected to alter the geometry of the surrounding space-time continuum to tie into the macro-physical expectations of General Relativity. Such macro-exclusions could also be expected to alter the radiative symmetry of emitting bodies such as stars circulating around mass centres such as galaxies. This effect on the emissions particularly of Fermions such as Neutrinos would create an equal and opposite centripetal force on those stars, cf. “the Pioneer anomaly,” tightening the orbits of the more peripheral stars circling around galaxies.
CLOSING COMMENTS
Current experimental observations in physics have given us data that are reproducible and exquisitely aligned to theory although the underlying contemporary explanations for them seem beyond normal human reason. Employing Now and Always, as natural concepts, with the use of Symmetrical Pauli Exclusion runs counter to the current nihilism in explanatory physics and seems to point towards an Idealist Theory of Everything. This would ultimately only make sense in the realm of science if there was physical testing and falsifiability.
The hope of this essay is that in the future dimensions will be seen as no more than useful illusions and that a new mathematics based on Now, Always and quanta will prevail at a fundamental level with the parsimony of just those three assumptions. The greater hope is that the enormous wisdom of Idealist philosophy will, once again, illuminate science and thereby delineate the world we live in with explanatory powers unavailable to the current paradigm.