Some reflections on the Truth Value of Modern Theoretical Physics

Some reflections on the Truth Value

of Modern Theoretical Physics

The use of the term “Ideal” below is modeled after this formulation: first: Phenomena. second: Concept. third Idea; and fourth Ideal, from Tomberg’s “The Art of the Good – On the Regeneration of Fallen Justice”.

I have been doing spiritual (Ideal) physics for almost three decades. My earliest work was “There is no Free Energy: Space and “field” phenomena; Nature and sub-nature”. https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/vol/46/n05/Goethe_Space_Field_Phenomena.html

There I challenged the idea, that a device that puts out more electrical energy, than its electrical input, is not actually creating “free” energy. “It” comes from some “place”, and I made references to Lehrs book: “Man or Matter”, and three works of George Adams Kaufmann: “Space and the Light of Creation”; “Physical and Ethereal Spaces”; and, “Universal Forces in Mechanics”

One of the great tragedies for the Anthroposophical Society, and as a consequence for the whole World, is the loss of Adams’ works on mathematical physics. Among the basic books of Goethean Science, “Physical and Ethereal Spaces” should be first. Conceive of reading it as Yoga for the Imagination. “As Rudolf Steiner said on one occasion, we must learn to experience what is “extensive” intensively, and what is “intensive” extensively.” https://kyl.neocities.org/books/%5BTEC%20ADA%5D%20physical%20and%20ethereal%20spaces.pdf

My next excursion into a contemplation of Ideal Physics was: “Electricity and the Spirit in Nature” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/electricityandthespiritinnature.html

In that work I try to see Nature’s processes in their wholeness expression. This requires working first with the ideas of thinking and the imagination, so as to then be able to understand their effect on how we see the world. The work is long, as it must be for our ideation, given that folks suffering from modern “education”, believe the world is basically parts, and hardly any thought is given to how it all functions together with the whole.

Further work on an Ideal Physics was done here: “Letters on Magic” https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2019/05/20/letters-about-magic/

As I had been studying Hermetic Science (magic) since about 1973, I was drawn into the idea that there might be a relationship between the four elements of classical antiquity, Fire/will; Air/intellect; Water/feeling; and, Earth/consciousness, and the four fundamental forces and transformations of modern physics: Electromagnetism; Gravity; and the Weak and Strong nuclear forces.

As it needed to be, it also is long – I wrote it in 12 parts. Along the way I encourage the thought that a quantum world does not actually exist. This includes the study of David Shiang’s: “God does not play dice”.

I began the series on Magic with a reference to an article in the New York Times: “Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics”.

My latest effort to study electrical phenomena began with the certainty that behind every phenomena stands living Cosmic Beings. “The Father at Rest – magical and mystical dark-matter physics in the Age of Technological Chaos”.

The primary Ideal is Unity. There is also a pairing, as a consequence: Father (the generator – the One) and Mother (the nurturer – the Many). What is lamely called “quantum entanglement” (two particles, after being separated in Space, cannot be separated in Time) is proof of the fundamental Unity, a quality never lost, however many transformations.

For example, the latest research in high energy physics has suggested that the mathematical “point” in space, where the God Particle (the Higgs Boson, aka: the cause of mass) is to be found, shows abnormal electrical presence (the strength of the field provided by the principle of Unity) … that is 125 times larger than the hydrogen atom.

A recent New York Times article is named: “Physics and the Future”. Below is the whole article copied, with comments by me in []’s, and italics. Mysterious are the Ways of the Tiny. There being many points of view, or multiple kabbalah’s, I can share with those interested, Stephen Clarke’s: “The Sacred Geometry of Our Ancestral Pathways”. Send me an email {hermit@tiac.net}, and I’ll send a word file.

The Art is terrific, … it is about 37 pages, and a serious reader should print it.

I also recommend Georg Unger’s “On Nuclear Energy and the Occult Atom”, which – amazingly – still seems to be in print.

~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~~!~!~ begin quote

The future belongs to those who prepare for it, as scientists who petition federal agencies like NASA and the Department of Energy for research funds know all too well. The price of big-ticket instruments like a space telescope [the assumption of a lifeless and non-sentient Nature dominates – see http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/space.html ], or particle [the smallest parts create the observable whole] accelerator can be as high as $10 billion.

And so this past June, the physics community began to consider what they want to do next, and why.

That is the mandate of a committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, called Elementary Particle Physics: Progress and Promise. Sharing the chairmanship are two prominent scientists: Maria Spiropulu, Shang-Yi Ch’en Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and the cosmologist Michael Turner, an emeritus professor at …

Ariel Davis, asking questions … [image selections by yours truly]

In the 1980s, Dr. Turner was among the scientists who began using the tools of particle physics to study [so, from the tiniest, we can build up the whole?] the Big Bang and the evolution of the universe, and using the universe [the “universe” as a theory – idea] to learn about particle physics. Dr. Spiropulu, born in Greece, was on the team in 2012 that discovered the long-sought Higgs boson at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN; she now uses quantum computers to investigate the properties of wormholes. [above, in Letters on Magic, I deconstructed the quantum Loki inspired fantasy, with the help of a MIT trained engineer, who thought in a very different way from the “theorists”]. The committee’s report is scheduled for release in June 2024.

[The tricky part goes like this: there is a real aspect to what they study in High Energy physics. The conceptions in which their conclusions are framed, however, are in error. For starters, there is no place in the “universe”, where what is done in a Hadron super-collider is also done by “nature”. Theory sez this happens in our Sun and Stars. Look mommy at what we did, making “suns – atom bombs” appear in the life sphere. An essentially unnatural science, commits an unnatural act, all in good faith … sort of … where would the militarism of the world be, without new toys.]

Recently The Times met with the two scientists to discuss the group’s progress, the disappointments of the last 20 [20?, really? Try 50.] years and the challenges ahead. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Why convene this committee now?

Turner: I feel like things have never been more exciting in particle physics, in terms of the opportunities to understand space and time, matter and energy, and the fundamental particles — if they are even particles. If you asked a particle physicist where the field is going, you’d get a lot of different answers.

But what’s the grand vision? What is so exciting about this field? I was so excited in 1980 about the idea of grand unification, and that now looks small compared to the possibilities ahead.

Ariel Davis

You’re referring to Grand Unified Theories, or GUTs, which were considered a way to achieve Einstein’s dream of a single equation that encompassed all the forces of nature. Where are we on unification?

Turner: As far as we know, the basic building blocks of matter are quarks and leptons [leptons have a half-life of 2 millionths of a second, – and the universe was built on these “stones”?] ; the rules that govern them are described by the quantum field theory called the Standard Model. In addition to the building blocks, there are force carriers — the photon, of the electromagnetic force; eight gluons, of the strong color force; the W and Z bosons, of the weak nuclear force, and the Higgs boson, which explains why some particles have mass. The discovery of the Higgs boson completed the Standard Model.

[Stuff ??? is ??? take “water, for example. Wreck living water with chemicals or electricity, and we get molecules. Nature, oddly, never gives us pure elements (of the table of elements). Even gold never appears in nature without an accompanying partner. All is combinations of elements, and much of stuff is highly complex. Once you cross the boundary, between the living and the lifeless, a mystery appears. Where in nature can we find nature creating life out of the lifeless? Our unnatural science’s theory and belief, that the lifeless generates the living, is nowhere empirically observed.]

What is a molecule, but a corpse-part of something living. Likewise, an atom is a corpse of corpse-parts. Effectively, Cern practices a kind of necromancy, [“smashing and breaking” rituals, without any sense there might be some kind of sentience latent there. For a magical and mystical Ideal science, the smallest living invisible beings are the elementals: salamanders (fire), undines (water), sylphs (air), and gnomes (earth). How does that “activity” create physical matter? In Rudolf Steiner’s works I encountered this conception, … I’ll paraphrase: Matter arises from the intersection of four planes of ethereal forces.

The point center aspect of matter is the inner locus of a geometric figure we call a tetrahedron — four sides, each an equilateral triangle. With our studies of projective geometry, we have learned to move these four planes inward into a point center, where the “triangle” disappears, yet remains the same.

Each plane can also be grasped by thought as infinite. So, we take the planes of the tetrahedron, and imaginatively move them outward, instead of inward. This spherical-like gesture generates the “plane at infinity”.

It can help to actually imagine this movement inward and outward. Rudolf Steiner said this: “Think on it: how the point becomes a sphere and yet remains itself.  Hast thou understood how the infinite sphere may be only a point, and then come again, for then the Infinite will shine forth for thee in the finite.“.

From George Adams we can get the idea that the leaving of physical three dimensional space, has us then in ethereal space, which is planar “centered”, not point centered.

Now imagine the sides of the tetrahedron as a community elemental beings, yet each triangle is only one of the four types. Not only that, bring in the older ideas of the Pyramid builders, that fire is a symbol for will (Father), air a symbol for intellect (Son), water a symbol for feeling (Mother), and earth a symbol for consciousness. Consciousness is the union of the other three.

Fire is the Saturn power- or will, Air the Sun power – intellect, Water the Moon power – feeling, and Earth the Earth power – consciousness. According to the Emerald Tablet, and the Tarot, these three qualitative powers combine to generate the fourth.]

But the quest for the fundamental rules is not over. Why two different kinds of building blocks? Why so many “elementary” particles? Why four forces? How do dark matter, dark energy, gravity and space-time fit in? Answering these questions is the work of elementary particle physics.

Spiropulu: The curveball is that we don’t understand the mass of the Higgs, which is about 125 times the mass of a hydrogen atom.

When we discovered the Higgs, the first thing we expected was to find these other new supersymmetric particles, because the mass we measured was unstable without their presence, but we haven’t found them yet. (If the Higgs field [the effect of the Principle of Unity] collapsed, we could bubble out into a different universe — and of course that hasn’t happened yet.) [Literally, thanks be to God! joyously ~!~!~!~!~!~!@!!]

That has been a little bit crushing; for 20 years I’ve been chasing the supersymmetrical particles. So we’re like deer in the headlights: We didn’t find supersymmetry, we didn’t find dark matter as a particle. [the field of levity (the Son) as is paired with the field of gravity (the Mother).

Turner: The unification of the forces is just part of what’s going on. But it is boring in comparison to the larger questions about space and time. Discussing what space and time are and where they came from is now within the realm of particle physics.

From the perspective [religious belief] of cosmology, the Big Bang is the origin of space and time, at least from the point of view of Einstein’s general relativity. So the origin of the universe, space and time are all connected. And does the universe have an end? Is there a multiverse? How many spaces and times are there? Does that question even make sense?

Spiropulu: To me, by the way, unification is not boring. Just saying.

Turner: I meant boring relatively speaking. It’s still very interesting!

Spiropulu: The strongest hint we have of the unity of nature comes from particle physics. At high enough energies, the fundamental forces — gravity [Mother’s Love], electromagnetism [Father’s love at rest] and the strong and weak nuclear forces [In it (the Word) was life, and the life was the light of the world – it helps to picture these material entities as having an invisible to the senses ethereal and sentient self-aware inner nature] — seem to become equal [all is harmonious – the Music of the Spheres].

But we have not reached the God scale in our particle accelerators. So possibly we have to reframe the question. In my view the ultimate law remains a persistent puzzle, and the way we solve it is going to be through new thinking.

Turner: I like what Maria is saying. It feels like we have all the pieces of the puzzle on the table; it looks like the four different forces we see are just different facets of a unified force. But that may not be the right way to phrase the question.

That is the hallmark of great science: You ask a question, and often it turns out to be the wrong question, but you have to ask a question just to find out it’s the wrong one. If it is, you ask a new one.

{ Pictures of Maria Spiropulu of the California Institute of Technology, left, Michael Turner, of the University of Chicago, center, with reporter Dennis Overbye. }

Ariel Davis

String theory — the vaunted “theory of everything” — describes the basic particles and forces in nature as vibrating strings of energy. Is there hope on our horizon for better understanding it? This alleged stringiness only shows up at energies millions of times higher than what could be achieved by any particle accelerator ever imagined. Some scientists criticize string theory as being outside science.

Spiropulu: It’s not testable.

Turner: But it is a powerful mathematical tool. And if you look at the progress of science over the past 2,500 years, from the Milesians, who began without mathematics, to the present, mathematics has been the pacing item. Geometry, algebra, Newton and calculus, and Einstein and non-Riemannian geometry. [ … except when one ignores the incompleteness theorems of Gödel, which basically sez that arithmetical functions are based on unproven assumptions and axioms, and this fact means the results are also lacking certainty, given that we can change the unproven axioms at will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems ]

Spiropulu: I would be more daring and say that string theory is a framework, like other frameworks we have discovered, within which we try to explain the physical world. The Standard Model is a framework — and in the ranges of energies that we can test it, the framework has proved to be useful.

Turner: Another way to say it is that we have new words and language to describe nature. Mathematics is the language of science, and the more our language is enriched, the more fully we can describe nature. We will have to wait and see what comes from string theory, but I think it will be big.

[ Here we run into the fundamental logical problem: quantities vs. qualities . Mathematics is a language of counting and measuring. Yet, our total experience is full of “qualia”, or that which can’t be reduced to number – such as the taste of a fresh orange, or the delight of a first kiss. What is called the search for meaning is also fully qualitative. ]

Ariel Davis

Among the many features of string theory is that the equations seem to have 10⁵⁰⁰ solutions — describing 10⁵⁰⁰ different possible universes or even more. Do we live in a multiverse?

Turner: I think we have to deal with it, even though it sounds crazy. And the multiverse gives me a headache; not being testable, at least not yet, it isn’t science. But it may be the most important idea of our time. It’s one of the things on the table. Headache or not, we have to deal with it. It needs to go up or out; either it’s part of science or it isn’t part of science.

Ariel Davis

Why is it considered a triumph that the standard model of cosmology doesn’t say what 95 percent of the universe is? Only 5 percent of it is atomic material like stars and people; 25 percent is some other “dark matter,” and about 70 percent is something even weirder — Mike has named it “dark energy” — that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

Turner: That’s a big success, yeah. We’ve named all the major components.

Ariel Davis

But you don’t know what most of them are.

Spiropulu: We get stalled when we reach very deep. And at some point we need to change gear — change the question or the methodology. At the end of the day, understanding the physics of the universe is not a walk in the park. More questions go unanswered than are answered.

Ariel Davis

If unification is the wrong question, what is the right one?

Turner: I don’t think you can talk about space, time, matter, energy and elementary particles without talking about the history of the universe.

The Big Bang looks like the origin of space and time, and so we can ask, What are space and time really? Einstein showed us that they’re not just the place where things happen, as Newton said. They’re dynamical: space can bend and time can warp. But now we’re ready to answer the question: Where did they come from?

We are creatures of time, so we think the universe is all about time. And that may be the wrong way to look at the universe. [ Linear time is a kind of necessary fiction. We are always in the Now, and past and future never exist. Ursula LeGuin’s “The Dispossessed” has as its main character a theoretical physicist trying to work out a “mathematics” in which the sequential marries the simultaneous]

We have to keep in mind what you said earlier. Many of the tools in particle physics take a very long time to develop and are very expensive. These investments always pay off, often with big surprises that change the course of science.

And that makes progress challenging. But I am bullish on particle physics because the opportunities have never been bigger and the field has been at the bleeding edge of science for years. Particle physics invented big, global science, and national and now global facilities. If history is any guide, nothing will prevent them from answering the big questions! [such as “What is consciousness?”~!~!~!~!#%*]

Ariel Davis

It took three decades to build the James Webb Space Telescope.

Spiropulu: Space — bingo!

Turner: I mean, science is all about big dreams. Sometimes the dreams are beyond your immediate reach. But science has allowed humankind to do big things — Covid vaccines, the Large Hadron Collider, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, the Webb telescope — that extend our vision and our power to shape our future. When we do these big things nowadays, we do them together. If we continue to dream big and work together, even more amazing things lie ahead. [perhaps, but have you truly found the right questions yet?]

Dennis Overbye joined The Times in 1998, and has been a reporter since 2001. He has written two books: “Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Story of the Scientific Search for the Secret of the Universe” and “Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance.” @overbye

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 24, 2023, Section D, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Physics and the Future. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Since I wrote the above, an interesting set of ideas appeared. Here is the article, which then also includes commentary {~!~!~!~}. Keep in mind that there is some kind of there there, … the errant assumptions as to what it all means are to be remembered.

  "Australian scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy. The finding, published today in the journal Nature, reveals that this enzyme uses the low amounts of the hydrogen in the atmosphere to create {assumption} an electrical current. This finding opens the way to create devices that literally make energy from thin air.

{ the facts observed are parts of a whole … }

The research team, led by Dr. Rhys Grinter, Ph.D. student Ashleigh Kropp, and Professor Chris Greening from the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne, Australia, produced and analyzed a hydrogen-consuming enzyme from a common soil bacterium.
Recent work by the team has shown that many bacteria use hydrogen from the atmosphere as an energy source in nutrient-poor environments. “We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters, and the deep ocean” Professor Greening said. “But we didn’t know how they did this, until now.”

{ Matter is a result of the interweaving of living beings, and at all the “edges” of the environment a life power is present as an interweaving of primary qualitative fields. The Principle of Unity appears in the above phenomena … that is none of the parts are ever disconnected from each “other”, given that every “thing” is embedded in interactive fields. “In it (the Word) was Life (bacterium is one form), and the Life was the Light (hydrogen electrical linkage) of the World.”}

“In this Nature paper, the researchers extracted the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. They showed that this enzyme, called Huc, turns hydrogen gas into an electrical current. Dr. Grinter notes, “Huc is extraordinarily efficient. Unlike all other known enzymes and chemical catalysts, it even consumes hydrogen below atmospheric levels—as little as 0.00005% of the air we breathe.”

{ Tesla remarked that it would be possible to extract electricity from the “ambient medium“. }

The researchers used several cutting-edge methods to reveal the molecular blueprint of atmospheric hydrogen oxidation. They used advanced microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine its atomic structure and electrical pathways, pushing boundaries to produce the most resolved enzyme structure reported by this method to date. They also used a technique called electrochemistry to demonstrate the purified enzyme creates electricity at minute hydrogen concentrations.
Laboratory work performed by Kropp shows that it is possible to store purified Huc for long periods. “It is astonishingly stable. It is possible to freeze the enzyme or heat it to 80 degrees celsius, and it retains its power to generate energy,” Kropp said. “This reflects that this enzyme helps bacteria to survive in the most extreme environments. “
Huc is a “natural battery” that produces a sustained electrical current from air or added hydrogen. While this research is at an early stage, the discovery of Huc has considerable potential to develop small air-powered devices, for example as an alternative to solar-powered devices.
The bacteria that produce enzymes like Huc are common and can be grown in large quantities, meaning we have access to a sustainable source of the enzyme. Dr. Grinter says that a key objective for future work is to scale up Huc production. “Once we produce Huc in sufficient quantities, the sky is quite literally the limit for using it to produce clean energy.”

{In my first article above: “There is no Free Energy”. The thinking, in the article we have been reviewing, does not bother to consider that we might well upset an already damaged atmospheric environment. In the book “Man or Matter”, by Ernst Lehrs, we find the concept that when we remove
“electricity” from where it rests, we age the planet – the material – and push it in the direction of “dust’.

Building on that idea, because electricity is the principle of order (why matter adheres), we have broken the Nature given organization, and are thus producing chaos. This happens when we “take” a fundamental material phenomena, and relocate it into a more concentrated “form”, finding elaborate ways of making it do work (energy).

Having grasped this “force”, we use it in a way that produces more ‘order”, in one place in the interweaving of the various fields, and less order in another.

For a human being to be exposed to concentrations of order (electromagnetic fields of high level voltages), also produces imbalances that can lead to illness. }