TFNR - A lot of work to do
This is only the beginning. There is a lot of work to do.
Claims that physics and cosmology are substantially complete and that there is nothing left to explain in Nature, sometimes made by some incautious researcher, make me smile. The Universe is so vast and complex that I don't think humanity runs the risk of having nothing more to investigate, to discover, to understand.
More in depth
Many ideas, concepts, hypotheses have only been hinted at. In-depth studies and verifications are necessary both from a theoretical and an observational / experimental point of view.
Even if my intent has always been to provide a unified and coherent vision, some parts appear fragmented and unrelated, also because they were developed in different and successive moments of this long research.
The development of this System of Knowledge is only sketchy. It is necessary to deepen all the fundamental themes Such as the Dynamics of the Elementary Action, so complex, so "alien" to the physics we are used to, so difficult to support with direct observation and experimentation And many secondary aspects, but certainly important for understanding Physical Reality and the Universe.
Unfortunately Nature is much more complex than we would expect and would like. Even the objects that we consider elementary are not at all. Surely they are not that easy to describe. Complexity is everywhere, and this is also due to the omnipresence of turbulence and chaos, which incessantly undermines order, in a continuous search for balance in optimizing the organization of Reality in all its aspects.
Even a particle considered absolutely elementary like the electron is a very complex and difficult object to visualize and describe. Its dynamics are complex, especially when it interacts with other electrons and with nucleons to form an atom. Its nature is complex, and the interactions it establishes with other particles, including photons, are complex in the various phenomena as emission and absorption. It is difficult to go beyond the mathematical and abstract descriptions to reach a more concrete, realistic, geometric vision and visualization. Despite the amazing results of modern physics, it is difficult to go beyond the rudimentary descriptions that emerge from Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory.
Why is it so difficult? How we would like the electron to be an elementary, simple, easily describable and representable object. Unfortunately Nature amazes us here too.
What we would like were a simple indivisible, punctiform particle, characterizable with a few fundamental parameters, if we could observe it with an extraordinary microscope capable of pushing its resolution down to the Planck scale (an instrument which unfortunately does not exist), we would see not an object, in the meaning we commonly attribute to this word, but we would see a sort of movie, something that happens, not something that exists, in the common sense we attribute to the words "to exist" and "existence".
We would see a swarm of events, fluctuations, micro-variations of space-time dimensions, many events, many fluctuations, an immense quantity. In a volume of space that we can consider comparable to the spatial extension of an electron substantially at rest (with a much lower speed than that of light in a vacuum, not subject to acceleration), about 10 - xx cubic meters, we would find about 10 - xx Elementary Events, incessant fluctuations of what is considered the fabric of space-time (of which actually represents the substrate, the Elementary Field).
And, if we had the right eyes or glasses, we would see the patterns of organization of all these Elementary Events, the correlations between their distributions, the Relations between the Events, which incessantly form the Processes that build Reality, from the Planck scale to infinite immensity of the Universe. The patterns of organization that we would see (characterized by a turbulent dynamic, alas) are those that determine the physical quantities that we try to measure: position, speed, acceleration, mass and its density, electric charge and magnetic spin.
And if it were not a free electron, but bound in an atom, in addition to those physical quantities, we would see the quantum quantities proper to the dynamics of the electron within the dynamics of the atom in whose existence it takes part: the quantum numbers, in fact.
An aspect of reality, an object, which we consider very elementary, hides an explosion of complexity, an immense number of Events and Relations, of fluctuations and correlations, a process that extends over about 20 orders of magnitude in space and an even wider temporal abyss.
What to say? Perhaps we are underestimating Nature. In the desire to understand, describe, model, predict, we oversimplify. We exchange happenings (Processes: Events organized by Relations) for objects, elementary levels for complex levels, predictive methods (models and mathematical rules) for descriptions of Reality.
It is right that we try. But if Nature turns down flatly, we have to accept that Nature, if it ever had a conscience, doesn't care that we find it hard to understand. In other words, chaos, turbulence, indeterminacy are fundamental, ontological aspects, characteristics, properties of Reality. We have no hope of finding an underlying order that can satisfy our unbridled (if legitimate) appetite for Nature's simplicity, elegance, order, and orderability.
Are we looking for Realism? Let's observe the Reality! What's the point of defining and looking for a Realism that doesn't reflect what we see?
The real problem is that we are not sure of what we see (result of measurements), we are not even sure of what seeing, measuring, represents. It is here that we must concentrate our efforts, on the basis of more advanced conceptual models, founded on a wider and deeper vision of Reality. It takes courage...
Formalization
We need to develop an innovative and solid reference framework for mathematical / quantitative formalization, able to represent the dynamics of the most elementary levels of Reality and, at the same time, of accepting, integrating and enhancing the formalisms of Special and General Relativity and those of Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model of Particles.
In the effort towards integration it will be necessary to give up something.
The relativistic vision will have to renounce its peculiar rigid and restrictive concepts of Reality and Realism, and the irreducible search for a determinism that cannot find evidence in the fundamentally uncertain nature of Physical Reality. Relativity is a theory of gravity, and therefore of mass and space-time (moreover seen as distinct entities and phenomena). It is a non-quantized field theory, very powerful in describing the interaction of massive objects and curved spaces and times, velocities and accelerations, but unable to describe complex and weird objects such as waves and particles (that make up those masses) and the their kinetic, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear interactions and phenomena.
The quantum vision will have to give up its infinite, and often imaginative, not to say absurd, interpretations, but above all it will have to give up a concept considered central, which is so unnatural, as to sound somehow supernatural, belonging to that world of beliefs, magic, superstition, mysticism, which science abhors, regards with suspicion and contempt: the violation of the principle of locality. Even if it is more comfortable, less tiring, to accept that quantum information propagates at instantaneous speed while not violating the principle of causality in its essence, in my opinion physics will have to do something more, work harder, to understand the reason, the fundamental nature of what is observed in phenomena such as quantum entanglement, the two-slit experiment, and other phenomena that determine the "weirdness" of the quantum world.
Both GR and QM / QFT must be reformulated in terms of curved time, flat space and variable speed of propagation of causality (so-called speed of light in vacuum). At the present, Gr is formulated in terms of curved time, curved space and constant speed of propagation of causality, and QM / QFT, so to speak, do not consider time (neither curved nor flat, a sort of temporal symmetry).
More generally, the extreme effort to unify what are considered the four fundamental forces of nature, although useful for highlighting their characteristics and associated phenomena, does not seem to lead to what in my opinion should be the main objective of Science: not "only " predict outcomes of observations and experiments, but above all help us understand, explain, describe reality in its non-manifest unity and in the multiplicity of the infinite forms we observe.
Giving up, or at least not considering a priority, this research towards the unification of such different and heterogeneous forces regarding the causal origin, the phenomenological form, spheres of expression, produced effects, range of action would help to shift attention from the spasmodic research of new particles and from an excessively atomistic vision focused on particles and quantum fields that justify their theoretical existence for the existence and interaction of particles, from the unproductive opposition between the relativistic and quantum visions of reality, from the dominant centrality of symmetry /e and beauty in physical research.
It would make it possible to reverse the sense of research and aspiration to knowledge, to combine the ordinary bottom-up approach with a different top-down approach, an attempt to imagine a creative and evolutionary, causal and variational training process that leads from nothing to infinity complexity of Nature, where the most relevant physical entities and quantities (space, time, mass, movement, charge, spin) find explanation in the various manifestations of the dynamics of the Elementary Action, direct expression of a primary source, far beyond the waves and particles that we observe and that represent a (small) part of what seems to exist and give structure and shape to the Universe.
It is both a search for knowledge and a search for meaning, ontological, phenomenological and dynamic knowledge to understand the Fundamental Nature of Reality and how the world works, and at the same time a search for meaning, a sense of Existence, and a sense of Essence, of the Form of the Reality of which we are part.
This search for knowledge and meaning must be reflected in the development of an adequate formal reference framework, where math must adapt to the multilevel structure of Reality, the right and best mathematical tool for each level, renouncing the utopian aspiration to a single equation able to represent everything, everything that happens and can happen, everything that exists and can exist, and all the infinite forms of the evolving universe.
Observations and experiments
I think that a decisive change is needed on these issues. As for the theoretical side, also for observations and experiments a decisive defocusing from the world of particles is needed, to make room and direct attention and resources towards other research areas, above all investigations on the fundamental forces and fields that create the dynamics of the most elementary levels of Reality, and on the structure of the universe and cosmic dynamics.
The particles of ordinary matter are an important part of Physical Reality, for our very existence, representing almost all of the matter that makes up our body. But in the global energy balance of the Universe, if the most accredited calculations are correct, they globally represent about 5% of the total. What about the "other" 95%? Dedicating such a significant part of the economic resources, time and energy of many researchers to particle science does not seem the right thing. It is necessary to redirect resources to other research areas, but above all to reform the scientific academic world to allow researchers who wish to do it and who have the ability to concentrate their efforts on both theoretical and observational / experimental themes of frontier, innovative, potentially capable of trace new ways of understanding Physical Reality.
No dark matter particles found? Doesn't MOND seem able to explain everything that happens in the cosmos? Dark matter and MOND together, properly integrated / coordinated, seem to provide better explanations of what we see? We must direct the search towards "something" that can summarize the interesting aspects of the dark matter theory with some interesting MOND predictions. Non-particle dark matter? Is it necessary to investigate the foundations of Reality, beyond particles? Why not?
In this sense, the large institutions that finance the world of research could, should make an effort to plan, to direct research more towards strategic objectives, in search of a real understanding of the fundamental themes of physics and cosmology, and help the researchers to avoid persisting in more "comfortable" but unproductive directions, in favor of an academic career rather than the very meaning of research.
In short, something needs to be done. Butting for eternity against the glass like a fly, looking for yet another new particle that can explain all of reality, is not what we expects from science. Above all, don't use up much of your resources to do exactly that. A change of direction is needed.
A suggestion... an example for all... let's start again from diffraction, from the double slits experiment, let's propose it again with today's instruments and methodologies, trying to control all the fundamental and secondary parameters and variables, to really understand what happens, not only in the mathematical terms of quantum mechanics, but, more in general, we can use this crucial experiment to better understand what lies between particles, between their interactions, between the slits.
To understand what we see today, we need to think beyond, observe beyond, experiment beyond...
The cognitive domain of Nature
The physical and the cognitive are two aspects of a single Reality, of the only existing Reality. They are a unit, even if for purposes of scientific investigation, and only for this reason, we speak of two complementary domains.
How can we define the physical, the cognitive, and, again only for descriptive purposes, the boundary between these two domains? Like so many other boundaries that we find between different spheres of unitary Reality, this too appears blurred, with overlapping and blurred areas. The transition between the physical and the cognitive, or rather, the emergence of the cognitive from the physical is a matter of evolution, of complexity, and we know that evolution is not a linear, sequential, gradual process.
We can begin by saying that everything that is not physical is cognitive. Here we risk a circularity in the definition. But I would like to continue hypothesizing that the cognitive is the domain where physical laws, physical processes, are not (necessarily) respected. It is the world of representations of Reality (physical and cognitive itself): perceptions, sensations, emotions, thoughts, ideas, models, systems of knowledge, and many other things that we normally, and erroneously / superficially, think are "not real", like dreams, products of the imagination, etc.) in a crescendo of complexity driven by the evolution of the mind. From the expressions of the most elementary cognitive systems of the simplest living organisms to the complex mind of human beings, the most cognitively evolved organisms we know, up to the collective cognitive systems, which bring together multiple living beings in complex and articulated cognitive networks, and still to the synthetic systems / artificial (automata) whose complexity is rapidly growing thanks to the development of artificial intelligence.
Everything that has existed, exists, will exist, everything that can exist, everything that we can imagine, everything is real in a general sense. It is important to distinguish what is physically real from what is cognitively real, in order to correctly understand the properties and dynamics of both, but above all to correctly understand the unity of Reality in all its aspects and domains.
Cognitive Reality, in all its ontological, phenomenological and dynamic aspects, will be the subject of a forthcoming study and a dedicated paper. The same principles, the same conceptual tools used in this work will be extended from Reality as a whole, and in particular from Physical Reality, to the study of Cognitive Reality, or Metareality, to Metaphysics therefore, and to the most evolved part of this, the Meta-metaphysics, the study of Meta-cognitive Reality, or, as it is commonly called, "cognitive science".
Links to the tables of contents of TFNR Paper
