TFNR - Introduction

This paper is an introduction to Evolutionary Physics, a research project aimed to develop a new comprehensive model of description of Physical Reality, founded on a constructivist paradigm, an integral extension of the evolutionary theory to the whole domain of Nature. Evolutionary Physics is part of Evolutionary Knowledge, a wide approach to the study of the whole Reality, an attempt to develop a model of Reality as a unitary, coherent and integrated process and a model of the Universe, in both its physical and cognitive aspects, as a whole system in evolution.

A new vision, new unconventional and partly original hypothesis, new semantic categories, different methodologies for a new and wide framework able to incorporate the value of the extraordinary results achieved so far by science and philosophy, both modern and traditional. To overcome the current difficulties in the theoretical field in physics and cosmology, we need to go back to basics, to look at the world and our theories with new eyes. A step forward in the great adventure of knowledge.

The fundamental structure of Reality, as proposed by Evolutionary Knowledge, has important impacts on the vision of physical reality and the physical phenomena. To enhance the knowledge about physical reality, I propose to undergo the same pillars of the current physical theories, i.e. the matter centric vision (atomism), the non-locality hypothesis, the theory of big bang and inflation. At the same time, I propose to revise other theories, putting them in a wider framework that can improve their compatibility and their capacity of explanation: i.e. the general relativity and the quantum mechanics. So, I think about Evolutionary Physics both as a new approach, a new vision, and as an extension, an enhancement of the standard modern physics. A stimulus to address the theoretical and the experimental research in new directions, to go beyond the known, to explore new horizons in physics and cosmology.

At the same time, I intend Evolutionary Physics (in short EP) as the discipline that studies the formation of Physical Reality, through an integral extension of the evolutionary paradigm to all the fields of the scientific research. Not a TOE, a Theory of Everything, strictly speaking. This is an attempt to develop a new and wide unitary explicative framework, that can integrate the existing science theories, aspects of philosophies and traditional systems of knowledge, new and original visions of Physical Reality. As a vast theoretical ecosystem, Evolutionary Physics tries to develop new hypothesis about the fundaments of Reality, new approaches to the study of the natural phenomena of information, energy, matter and the dynamics of the material forms. It also seeks to promote new addresses of experimental research to encourage the study of the properties of the fundamental physical structures involved in the construction of Reality. Evolutionary Physics proposes a continuously evolving model, where the concepts, the descriptions will co-evolve with the development of a consistent formalization. In EP key terms (like Source, Force, Field, Event, Action, Information) are indicated with the initial capital letter, to discern their meanings from those attributed in common or current scientific language.

More in general, Evolutionary Knowledge represents a holistic approach to the observation of the natural and human world, based on an integral extension of the evolutionary theory and on a critical review of constructivist thought. It is Knowledge of Reality and its manifestation, the Universe in evolution. I aim to develop a unitary explicative framework, an evolutionary organic theory of natural phenomena, of the material world. And more, a theory of the cognitive phenomena of living beings, of the man and its individual and collective expressions. The dynamics of the whole Reality. Only for description purposes, we can ideally think Evolutionary Knowledge as composed of three main parts:

• Evolutionary Physics, that studies the natural forms and phenomena as defined above,
• Evolutionary Metaphysics, that studies the cognitive forms created by the living beings (representation of Reality, thoughts, dreams, semantic content of communication, culture, ecological and economic relations and structures, etc.),
• Evolutionary Cognitive Sciences or Meta-metaphysics, that studies the functions and the processes by which the living beings, and more widely, the Finalistic Agents, create, share and transform cognitive structures and forms.

Always under a unitary approach, we can identify each part of the object of the study of Evolutionary Knowledge as a Reality domain. Therefore, we can talk about a physical domain, with its physical entities, events, relations and processes, a metaphysical or cognitive domain, again with its entities, events, relations and processes, and a meta-metaphysical or meta-cognitive domain, with its own entities, events, relations and processes. Ontology (entities), phenomenology (events) and dynamics (relations and processes) are the three perspectives of the study and the description of Reality. At any level of complexity of Reality, Ontology studies the existence of Reality itself, the Fundamental Entities and all the derived entities that produce existence. Phenomenology studies the essence, the form of Reality, the Elementary Events and the complex events that happen. Dynamics studies the interactions between the Entities and the Relations between the Events, the Processes and their evolution.

And finally, “evKnowledge” is the research project aimed to the promotion and the development of Evolutionary Knowledge, and the related sub-projects as Evolutionary Physics. All the results of the theoretical research are being collected in a wide-open access wiki resource under construction, the Evolutionary Knowledge Base. All materials and documents in the knowledge base are also freely navigable through a proprietary web application called “Semantic Maps Viewer”. It allows access to the various topics and links between them, as an exploration of a set of interconnected maps in the territories of Evolutionary Knowledge.

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Beside a synthetic description of this general theoretical framework and a brief history of the creation and the evolution of the Universe, this paper focuses on specific aspects of the physical world, making some hypothesis about the fundamental nature of Reality.

It tries to describe the Process of Formation of Reality (PFR), and the creative and evolutive aspects that characterize the process itself. In evKnowledge, the PFR is intended as the conceptual framework in which all the hypothesis about the structure of the Reality and the Universe, about information, energy and matter, take form and, for me, assume a unitary, coherent sense. It is the unitary and universal process by which the two aspects of the Source, the fundamental active entity interacting with the elementary passive one, cause the formation, the creation and the evolution, of Reality. This universal process comprehends all the processes that, at the various levels of complexity, realize all the phenomena that we can observe in the Universe.

The PFR describes the relations between the fundamental entities that give form to the Reality: “agents”, the forces, and “acted”, the fields, (as complementary aspects of the sources, active and passive respectively) and the events produced by their interactions. Events (always “actions” of agents/forces on acted/fields), as direct expressions of the sources through the interaction of their active and passive aspects, represent the various form of existence. The existence itself, in its true essence, can be defined as “a manifestation of a source, a force acting on a field, producing events”.

We will see how common-sense concepts as source(s), entities, events, relations, cause, space, time, force, field, action, information, energy, matter, mass, motion, charge, spin, structure, form, etc., in this framework assume different meanings, passing from the elementary levels of Reality to the more complex ones, and a new and deeper sense, unveiling some crucial aspect of the structure of the world. We will see how coherence and the “collective behaviour” of huge amounts of variously organized elementary events shape the infinitely small, and how what happens at the tiniest scales draws the dynamics and gives shape to the whole Universe.

Entities-Events-Relations

In the section named “What exists? What happens? How happens?” I will try to explain my vision of what exists in the Reality, or what we can say that exists, what is real in a physical sense, what composes the Physical Reality. In my opinion, essentially, we can say that entities (the sources in their active and passive aspects, forces and fields) exist “in and because of” their interaction that produce the existence in the form of events, the variations of the states of passive entities (fields) causally produced by active entities (forces).

Even at the very fundament of Reality, the relational aspects show their constitutional nature, as in the more complex levels of Reality, where the relations among events (the pattern of organization that I call Information) give structure to the Forms that compose the Universe. Relational aspects emerge at any level of Reality, even in the definition of the fundamental dimensions of Reality: causality, space and time.

Even space and time, that are commonly (and, in my opinion, wrongly) intended as entities, in the basic hypothesis posed by Evolutionary Physics, must be intended as manifestations emerging from the relations among the events that animate the elementary level of Reality, visions of a former, in a causal sense, emerging complexity from the most elementary level of the Source and the dynamics of its two aspects. So, we can’t say that space and time exist. Rather we should say that space and time happen, emerging from the relations among those elementary events, that represent the existence at the very basic level of Reality.

If the Source should stop to manifest, if the Force and the Field should stop to interact, the incessant creation of the elementary event will stop, and, together, space and time, and everything in the Universe will instantly disappear and no one could be witness of it. Because everything, including us, is (made of) “organized events”, nets of relations, of interactions among events, Information that gives form to processes of events, we can dramatically conclude that “no Events = no Reality”. From this radical vision of the fundaments of the existence and essence/form, creation and evolution, we can construct the new vision of the Reality proposed by Evolutionary Physics, as described in this paper.

Observing the world, the ever changing and evolving Nature, it is impossible not to see and feel the action of the immense force that animates and enlivens this incessant creative and evolutive process. The unity in the diversity, simplicity under complexity. It seems impossible that the Universe in evolution is the product of a unique creative event in a distant past. It seriously seems unlikely that all the physical phenomena, all the events of energy and matter, that we discover day by day, are the result of a "charge" received by the space-time many billion years ago.

This force, that I think as incessantly causing the emergence of Reality from nothingness, is the active side of the Source of Reality, the passive side being an elementary field. From the interaction (that I call creation) of these two fundamental entities, Reality continuously emerges with all the derived forces and fields, and the relative interactions that characterize the physical world. These derived forces, fields and interactions are not independent entities, they are only different views, different aspects of the dynamics of the product of the interaction of the Fundamental Force and the Elementary Field: it is the Elementary Action, composed by the Elementary Events.

Everything originates and emerges from this fundamental incessant interaction. The basic properties of Physical Reality: causality, space, time, mass, motion, charge and spin, that manifest themselves through the derived forces and fields that we see in action in the Physical Reality, producing the complex phenomena we can observe in the physical world. The gravitational and the electromagnetic forces and fields, combined in an enhanced form of space-time, a form wider than the one described by General Relativity, that support those basic properties: causality, space, time, etc. And more, the dark and the ordinary matter, the gravitation and the dark energy, the Information the gives form to the Physical Reality, the Structures of Information (waves and particles) and the objects, the Forms, that compose the incessantly evolving Universe.

Therefore, we can imagine the fundamental causal operational agent, the Fundamental Force, incessantly acting on the Elementary Field, creating the Elementary Action, and giving power to the Evolution, with the derived forces, fields and interactions that give form to the Reality, at all the nested levels of complexity at which we can observe this universal process. “All that exists”, emerging from the organization of the Elementary Action. Creation and Evolution, Existence and Essence (or Form).

This paper then focuses on the structural and dynamical properties of the Fundamental Force and the Elementary Field, the basic entities from whose interaction all the existing entities and the natural phenomena, the objects studied by the physical sciences, originate and emerge. Force and Field, as one in the Source, and all the derived forces and fields that we see in the Nature, are complementary aspect, different expression of a unique source. Force and field respectively are the active and the passive counterparts of a unique entity, origin of Reality and all the natural phenomena.

From the causal point of view, Force and Field operate at the same level. Causally are one. More in general, fields are manifestations of forces, and, at the same time, forces are manifestations of fields. In other words, in Evolutionary Physics, we cannot say that forces generate fields, they are not the causes of the existence of fields. And specularly, we cannot think of a force as due to presence of a field. Forces are limited by the resistance opposed by fields. At the same time, fields, in their reactions to acting forces, exert “reactive” forces that find their limits in the acting forces themselves. So, forces, in some aspect, behave as fields, and fields, in some way, behave as forces. In facts, as claimed above, they are a unity, complementary aspects of the “sources”.

The Elementary Field is a unitary, evolutive field, dynamic and conservative, the substrate of any existing form, from the quantum vacuum to the structures of dark and ordinary matter, up to the complex forms, stars and galaxies, and living creatures. It is the root of the geometric (space) and sequential (time) aspects of Reality and more it is the support of the other properties and quantities that characterize the physical reality, mass, motion, charge and spin. All the fields that we can observe in the physical world (the gravitational field, the electric and magnetic fields, etc.) can be seen as field derived from that, as different views, different perspectives of the Elementary Field.

Then, a crescendo of complexity arises, in which Information, another fundamental element of the Process of Formation of Physical Reality, together with Action, plays the essential role. “In-form-action”: what gives form to the Action. In Evolutionary Knowledge, I consider Information as organized Action, and, at the same time, as the ability to organize Action. Information is the very object of Evolution, and itself a main step in the causal evolution of Reality (Force, Action, In-form-action, Form).

At each level of Reality, Information represents the whole set, the network of relations that link the events together. At the most elementary level, Information consists in the pattern of organization (the net of relations) of the elementary events (the fluctuations of the Elementary Field, that constitute the most elementary form of existence, the Elementary Action), as I will describe are in after. Information is the object of the evolutionary processes, that give form to more and more complex events from the very elementary level of the Field up to the most complex levels of the material and immaterial Forms.

In short, “Force - Action - Information - Form” is the core of the Process of Formation of Reality, its central pillar, the structure that I call “the main causal chain of Reality”. This fundamental structure incessantly empowers not only the formation of the physical side of the world, by also its cognitive side. Two sides of the same coin, these two aspects, the Physical Reality and the Meta, or Cognitive, Reality co-evolve to create the evolving Universe that enchants us with its increasing complexity.

As fundamental sub processes that together realize the Process of Formation of Reality, as manifestation of the Force interacting with the Field, Creation and Evolution, respectively produce Action, the Elementary Events, and Information, the patterns of organization of the events, that form the Structures and the Forms that compose the Universe. Creation operates in the absolute domain, where only the Field, a unitary field, animated by the Force, with its fluctuations, the Elementary Events, exists. Evolution operates in the relative domain, where the objects of the incessant mutation are not the events, but the relations among events. Events that became more and more complex dynamic aggregates, nets of relations that link events. This is the Information, that evolves producing multiplicity, complexity in the relative realm. So, I see Creation as the dynamics of the interaction between the fundamental entities, and Evolution as the dynamics of the interactions among the derived entities.

Everything evolves. Or, better, everything co-evolves, since in the world of Information everything is connected (with the limits imposed by the finite velocity of propagation of the Information in the Field – quantity commonly named “speed of light”). The very essence of Reality is incessant mutation, variation, change.

Subject to evolution are the ways forces act and the ways constraints, related to the properties of the fields, limit the expression of the same forces. Even the laws of Nature, the ways in which the Fundamental Principles of Evolutionary Dynamics express themselves at the various levels of Reality, evolve. And more, the quantities that we consider “constants” evolve, change, with the evolution of the whole Reality.

In a non-deterministic, non-reductionist, constructivist perspective, we can say that even the laws of Nature change and co-evolve with the increase of complexity of Physical Reality, though they are highly stable in the time horizon of the life of the Universe. The way toward complexity is so hard that the time in which the evolutive processes express themselves, modifying the manifestation of the fundamental principles that we call natural laws, is very long. On the other side, I have to say that, paradoxically, the model proposed in the Evolutionary Physics implies less need for drastic changes in the laws of Nature than commonly accepted cosmological models. Big bang, inflation, the existence of singularities, the accelerated expansion of the Universe, the multiverse, etc. often require radical and sudden changes of natural laws over time, and the basically contradictory, and not always clear idea, that exists, or had existed in the past, at least one special place where laws, as we know them today, were not valid or have manifested in a up rather different way.

Cause we use laws to describe Nature, not only to predict outcomes of experiments, we have not to renounce to establish stable laws, but we must always have well in mind that laws, as everything else in the world, can change in time and in the causal dimensions of Reality. Though they cannot change in space dimension (there are no special places in the Universe, i.e. singularities), they can evolve in time and with the increasing of causal complexity of Reality. Laws, as expression of the fundamental principles of the Evolutionary Dynamics, can appear different, especially in the most complex level of the Cognitive Reality, the Meta-Reality.

Lost the idea of a fixed set of laws, the mystery reappears. The mystery, that we have banished in so many areas of our knowledge of reality, reappears in the field of the extreme causal origin of Reality. The mystery about the Source of Reality (what really is, why it exists, where it comes from) and about its formative action (why and how the Source express itself in the creation and the evolution of Reality), in its fundamental complementary manifestations, the Force and the Field.

Everything incessantly emerges from the more elementary level of Reality, with new properties, new dynamics, new possibilities. The real and the possible co-evolve incessantly toward more complex states, in a continuous, but not necessarily linear, flow. Anti-entropic and entropic processes incessantly interact in the formation of the Physical and the Cognitive Evolution of new and different forms and meta-forms, which, in turn, co-evolve, influencing each other. Even Selection, the third component of the evolutive engine that operates in the Formation of Reality, co-evolves with those processes.

This is a creative and evolutive Universe, in which not only the existing evolve, but even the possible co-evolve with the existing, the actual, to construct the future, that incessantly becomes present and immediately past.

Though the fundamental scheme of Formation of Reality at the most elementary level is so simple, it manifests and operates in infinite different ways at the successive causal levels of Reality, producing the incessantly evolving complexity of the Universe. So, in this paper I will show this many and many times, in very different ways, to make it clear and to clarify the infinite different ways in which this scheme manifests itself, incessantly emerging from the more elementary levels of existence to the more complex forms, to the whole Universe in evolution.

An endless process of formation, where everything is causally connected to everything, where complexity emerges from the less complex layers of Reality, in an incessant evolution. This vision of Mind and Nature interacting, Physical Reality and Cognitive Reality, Physics and Meta-Physics, can be the fundament of a renewed spirituality, with the Man, the Evolution and the emerging complexity at the center of the scene, together with the Force and the Field, the creative aspect of Reality.

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So, what do we need now? In my opinion, essentially, we must operate on both sides of theoretical and experimental research, trying, through their continuous interaction, to grasp a real advancement in the knowledge of Reality, beyond the known, the accepted, the acceptable, the today thinkable. New eyes, new experiments, new ideas, new concepts and new relations among them.

I think we need many things. First, we need courage. Courage to abandon our current vision of physical reality. We don’t need to refuse the main current physical theories (i.e. general relativity, quantum mechanics, standard model of particles, standard cosmological model, etc.). Theories that, although in some respects begin to show inconsistencies and inaccuracies, in general represent great successes on the path of the research for knowledge. We need to go further, to watch reality from different perspectives, to abandon certainties that strongly limit our possibilities to let emerge a new vision of Nature.

We need to revise, without prejudice, the fundaments of the current theories, their same pillars, that affect our vision of the whole and the relations between the parts of our current fragmented knowledge. And to reconsider some other theories, putting them in a wider framework, enhancing their compatibility and descriptive power, to reach and reveal the elementary level unity that underlies the multiplicity of the phenomenological reality we directly make experience.

Among all:

• the matter centric vision (atomism)
• the non-locality hypothesis
• the theory of big bang and inflation
• the conception of space time and the constancy of the speed of light as in General Relativity
• the concept of unknowability of reality as in Quantum Mechanics

And what about the current theoretical developments in physics, quantum gravity among all? I would like to point out that in the context of Evolutionary Physics, it does not make sense to quantize gravity, that manifests a natural and well-functioning (see GR) continuous nature. The trick is to comprehend how a continuous quantity can lead to particles with a definite, quantized, mass. But, for me and as we will see in the following, the answer to this crucial and very important question can only emerge when we will fully comprehend the nature of mass and motion.

As well as the comprehension of the nature of charge and spin, in the terms of the dynamics of the Elementary Events, the Elementary Action in the Elementary Field and its “modes” of expression will lead us to find an answer of the problem of the quantized charges, the quantized levels in atoms and the quantum energy of the photons, that propagate in a continuous field. I think that Reality, in its fundaments, has a continuous elementary nature, but quantization emerges soon from this basic layer, at first because Elementary Events can appear as the seeds of the quantum, as I intend them as small local variations in the distributions of the tiny fluctuations of the local state of the Elementary Field (concepts like vacuum energy, quantum foam, etc.). In my opinion, localization can appear as precursor to individuations, and this as precursor to quantization.

So, I think, we cannot make physics without GR and QM and the full mastery of the dynamics of the continuous as well as the quantum fields are essential to correctly and fully describe the physical world. However, even if I believe that every idea, theory and the associated mathematics can be useful in the construction of this new framework, in the field of quantum gravity I think that loop quantum gravity is more interesting than string theory, especially the version named Spin Foam, which seems closer to my vision of the dynamics of the Elementary Action.

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Back on what we need, there are answers that we have to give, some "no", some "maybe" and some more difficult and courageous "yes".

We need to say some "NO":

• no cause, space and time as entities (they don’t exist a priory, they are relations among events)
• no big-bang
• no inflation
• no CMB as a big-bang fossil
• no to the use of the concept of the continues creation of pairs (e- and e+ couples) as a trick to explain obscure aspects of the dynamics of quantum vacuum, of the structure of nucleus of atoms, etc
• no to the current representation of the phenomenon known as quantum entanglement
• no to the multiverse hypothesis
• no to the hypothesis of the corpuscular nature of dark matter

We need to say some "MAYBE", that, in future, with the improvement of the research, I hope could become some "YES":

• the coexistence of continuity and quantization (continuity of the Field and quantization of the structures in the Field)
• CMB as the thermal finger print of today cosmos (today as intended by the concept of present in the General Relativity), different temperatures of different areas of the Elementary Field, corresponding to the vast scale structures of dark matter/dark energy that compose the cosmic web
• the large scale distributed weak density non-corpuscular nature of dark matter, as depressions in dynamic structure of the Elementary Field

And finally, we have to say some "YES", right now, as fundaments of this model of description of Reality:

• it is impossible to really understand the physical world, without a deeper comprehension of the structure of the whole Reality
• Reality, as everything in Nature, comes from a Source. The world is incessantly powered by a Force that, acting on a Field, incessantly operates the creation and the evolution of the whole Reality
• Existence is motion, or better, change, variation, mutation. In other words, exists what happens, only events exist
• the incessant emergence of the causal, space and time dimensions of Reality, as fundamental aspects, modes of relation among events

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Following these answers, in next chapter “2 - Reality? Universe?”, I will try to give an overview of this model of description of Physical Reality and its main features. Each item as a title, a slogan, a new path toward new science projects. Then, in the following sections, I will try to provide a more structured and systematic presentation of these hypotheses, of these concepts, here just outlined.

Areas

• The Research Project
• Reality - Existence - Essence (Form) – The Process of Formation (Creation and Evolution)
• Levels - Dimensions - Scales
• The elementary levels of Reality
• Entities: Source (Force - Field)
• Events: Action - Creation/Existence
• Relations: Information/Energy - Complexity - Evolution/Essence (Form)
• Processes: Entities that produce Events and Relations that organize them
• The world of continuity and the fundamental physical quantities: Mass - Motion - Charge - Spin
• The world of granularity: structures and the quantum
• Waves and particles - Radiation and matter
• The Universe of the Forms
• The cosmic evolution
• The biological evolution
• The cognitive evolution: the "meta" side of Reality

Topics

• Reality? Universe? Topic list (list of the topics related to these areas)

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And more, back on what we need, in my opinion it is important to develop a wide and adaptive theoretical framework, that can contain all the knowledge collected in the past and, at same time, the new knowledge that every day we collect and build about Reality. A set of theoretical tools, as an ontology, a phenomenology and a wide and articulated dynamics, to describe Reality at all the levels of complexity. A semantic system that can host all the knowledge coming from science and, at the same time, the knowledge coming from humanities, philosophies, religions, mystic paths, traditions, and so on. I think we need to go beyond determinism, positivism, scientism, and, at the same time, beyond magical thinking, belief, superstition, to capitalize all the precious contributions of science and the traditional knowledge, in a new, deeper and wider vision of Nature and Mind in a creative and evolutive Universe.

We also need a good and robust system of formalization, with a new mathematic language and new structures able to quantitatively describe Physical Reality, that can recover and value the immense patrimony of mathematic tools now used in physics.

And more, we need new classes of experiments, focused of the Elementary Field and the Structures of Information that evolve in it. And also, a critical re-visitation of very fundamental experiments, like, one for all, the double slit experiment, in all its versions.

For me it is not necessary to build huge accelerators, or to realize complex experiments, or to develop a lot of math, to get the fundamental principles that describe the essence of the nature of Reality. It is “sufficient” to observe “something”, even a simple natural phenomenon, an everyday common event. We need accelerators, experiments, math, to understand and describe the emergent complexity of the world, the infinite forms that incessantly evolve from those principles, from the very elementary levels of Reality to the most complex ones.

At the end, we basically need a new way of observing Reality, without prejudgments and preconceptions, open to the search of new and different meanings, even in the more mature science fields and for the more consolidates theories. A unified path to Knowledge that can embrace all the aspects of Reality with a common language and shared principles, a science able to grasp the complexity of Nature and, together, to go up again to the unity of Reality, in search of the Source and the primary principles that give shape to the Universe in which we live.

The courage to leave the safe places, to get into the unexplored and unknown territories of a new system of knowledge.

Links to the tables of contents of TFNR Paper

• Go to the contents list of the paper "The Fundamental Nature of Reality"