Reality is Reduced to Axioms

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Spellbound, Sep 10, 2014.

  1. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    I'm starting this thread in Physics & Math to argue the title's posit from the perspective of Logic. Fuzzy, predicate, propositional, all types of logic are welcomed here.

    Some questions to consider;

    1.) Is science adequate enough to explain reality by itself?

    2.) What meaningful axioms can we attribute to reality?

    Discuss.
     
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  3. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    You're not the boss of me.
     
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  5. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Lol. Will science one day discover a simple version of reality and its axioms?
     
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  7. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    The first issue I see is what we understand by "reality". The goal of science is to model objective, physical reality. However "reality" can also be taken to include subjectively perceived phenomena. There is whole world of the Humanities that science does not explain. But if we confine ourselves to objective physical reality, then we can set all that aside.

    The next issue is whether science "explains" it. That, it seems to me, depends on what level or type of explanation an individual finds satisfying. Science seeks to provide models that account for observations and predict what new ones can be expected. Whether these models "are" physical reality is a moot point. History shows that these models are often refined or superseded. Furthermore in many instances the models we have are partial views of reality that work for some purposes but not for others. So I am personally very reluctant to claim that any theory IS reality. I think a good maxim is to keep in mind that in science, all truth is provisional. Also, science, being an empirical discipline rooted in observation, cannot answer metaphysical questions such as why is there something and not nothing, why is there order in the cosmos rather than chaos, and so forth. All science can say to that sort of thing is, well that's the way it seems to be, according to observation. Some are content to leave it at that, while others aren't.

    As to axioms we can "attribute to reality", I'm afraid I don't quite understand this. What branch of reasoning do you have in mind here?
     
  8. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    What do you mean by a "simple version"?

    F=ma is a simple mathematical version of a force. Is that what you mean?
     
  9. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Hi exchemist,


    Thank you for your reply. I want to know the very foundational axioms that reality must meet in order to be real. As to your question of why something instead of nothing; Because it is necessary.
     
  10. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly. I want to reduce reality to a few simple axioms and then turn it into a simple mathematical equation.
     
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I tend to think axioms belong to a chain of reasoning, not to physical reality. The scientific approach, surely, is not to take ANYTHING as axiomatic, and to rely instead solely on observation. That, surely, is what is meant by science being an empirical discipline, isn't it?
     
  12. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    I think there are plenty of unspoken axioms (i.e. "givens") in science, and it's interesting to think about what they are. How about the assumption that scientific results are reproducible, or meaningful, or observable? There's certainly a presumption that "something" exists which we are all studying, right? I think, therefore I *am*. Reality exists as a presumption.

    I think all of the higher-level, subjective phenomena can all be discarded as emergent fluff. We take Reductionism as far as we can, parring reality down to the shortest possible list of absolute bare essentials, then declare that everything else falls out from the existence of that list.

    So, what's on the list?
     
  13. Farsight

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    Space/energy and waves running through it.
     
  14. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, but describe the space and define energy! What are waves? If matter is "energy" then what makes one type of energy have different properties than another? Clearly we need more specificity.

    "Energy is where something is and space is where something isn't". That doesn't really work. Plus, waves are a type of energy, right?
     
  15. Manifold1 Banned Banned

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    In all cases I can think of, yes... they either transport energy physically without recourse, or it's a distribution of energy probabilities.
     
  16. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    The job of science is to formulate theories that conform with the data from experimental results and aligning with our observations, and subsequently valid predictions arising from those.
    If that happens to actually be the true reality of the situation, all well and good.
     
  17. Farsight

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    It's actually very difficult. You can't define space in terms of something else. Or energy. Matter is made out of energy, but when you try to explain what energy is, it's tricky. I've looked into this and find that at the fundamental level I just can't distinguish space and energy. It's like space is this gin-clear ghostly elastic thing. When you add energy to it and refer to the stress energy tensor with its energy-pressure diagonal, it's like injecting more of the same in the middle with a hypodermic. As if space and energy are the same thing.

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    See the shear stress? That's shear stress in space. Like it's elastic. And gin clear. And kind of not really there, only it is.

    Electromagnetic waves are essentially "soliton pressure pulses". A photon is one pulse, see http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.2596. Field is the derivative of potential, see this: ""the curl operator on one side of these equations results in first-order spatial derivatives of the wave solution, while the time-derivative on the other side of the equations, which gives the other field, is first order in time".

    Check out topological quantum field theory.

    No it doesn't. Space has its vacuum energy. A field is a state of space. A field has energy. People say energy "fills" space, but you can't separate space and energy. It's like energy doesn't fill space, it is space. As for what space really is, hands up guv. Space is space. It looks like space is energy, and waves are energy, and matter is made of it.

    Yes. The wave is a pressure pulse, you inject more of that gin-clear elastic jelly to increase the pressure in the middle.
     
  18. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    In other words it's neither science nor maths: it's philosophy.

    It doesn't matter.
    Science isn't intended to "explain reality".

    None whatsoever.

    This is a scientifically and semantically meaningless question.

    That's an assumption. Necessary for what?

    And another meaningless piece of word salad.
    An axiom is a starting point for reasoning (something you've shown little capability of doing), it has bugger all to do with reality qua reality.
     
  19. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    Science used to seek to make predictions based on (sometimes mathematical) explanations; "Natural Philosopher" was the precursor to "Physicist", in fact. Once GR and QM came into the picture, though, our inability to intuit what the observed results were telling us has made many people claim that explanations were never the goal of science, which is simply not true. Explanations were the original impetus of scientific thinking.
     
  20. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    You misunderstand me.
    I have no quibble at all with the idea science provides explanations (of HOW things work).
    What I was saying is that science doesn't claim that what we get as a working result is anything to do with reality (or even what we look at).
    Other than, of course: here it is, that's what'll happen if you do X, this is what'll happen if you do Y. As to whether it's real or not is a question best left those of a more, er, metaphysical bent.
     
  21. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    Gotcha. I think a quest for base axioms is still valid in this regard. What do we need, minimally, to explain how ALL OF REALITY works? (ignoring how "real" any given axioms are)
     
  22. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    To me there's a fundamental difference between your "base axioms to explain how ALL OF REALITY works" and Spellbound's (repeated) exhortation to "reduce reality to a few simple axioms", especially when he also comes out with phrases like "very foundational axioms that reality must meet in order to be real".
    Your position I can get behind, Spellbound's... really not. (Especially given his predilection for spouting the sort of nonsense he does [sup]1[/sup] and his [inexplicable] fondness for the CTMU).

    1 One of his previous attempts (on a different forum) was "Reality is that". That constituted not only his claim but his entire "argument" AND his "proof". He has visions of being a grand philosopher while, at the same time, being incapable of the intellectual equivalent of tying his own shoelaces.
     
  23. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    Energy is one thing that should not appear on any list of axioms in our understanding of nature, nor should it ever be used in a fundamental explanation of anything.

    For starters, energy itself is an example of what's sometimes called a "function of state" in physics (particularly in thermodynamics), meaning that there are certain things like particles or fields that we think exist with certain attributes (like masses, positions, velocities, field magnitudes, etc, depending on the type of physics we're concerned with), and we define a quantity called "energy" that is a function of those attributes. (For instance, in nonrelativistic mechanics, the kinetic energy of a mass \(m\) moving with velocity \(v\) is simply defined to be the function \((1/2) m v^{2}\) of mass and velocity.) Energy is not some extra separate thing that exists apart from everything else in nature. It's meaningless to talk about energy without first agreeing that there's some matter or fields or whatever else that exist that we could invent a definition of energy for.

    The obviously notable thing about the quantity we call energy, and the reason we're interested in it enough to give it a name at all, is of course that it's conserved. That too is not axiomatic, since it is deducible from other theories in physics. When we say that something is "impossible" because it "violates conservation of energy", what we really mean is that it contradicts machanics or electromagnetism or gravitation or whatever theory it is that predicts the relevant energy conservation law.

    If anyone ever tries to sell you that XYZ in physics is really, fundamentally, just bla-bla-bla energy, that's a sure sign they have no clue what they're talking about.


    Isn't that what physics (or at least the "quest for a TOE" problem) already is?
     

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