vol 3: Development
3 Physics
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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Introduction
If we assume that the universe is divine, physics is the study of God's body. The body is the most abstract, that is the least complex, of the layers of complexity in the structure of the universe. Modern physics is concerned with the universe as we find it, without going too deeply into how it started. Implicit in physics is the feeling that everything could have been otherwise.
Christian history, building on the Jewish history, tells us that it all began when God created the world:
'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water, God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that light was good, and God divided light from darkness. God called light 'day' and darkness 'night. Evening came and morning came: the first day. ... (Genesis 1:1-5)
A modern alternative to this story is the 'hot big bang theory' which works on the same general principle. (Turner & Tyson) The world started from something extremely primitive like chaos, void or vacuum, and grew into the world we know today. NASA, Cambridge University. The book of Genesis explains this movement as the work of a God. We feel that the universe creates itself. Both explanations reach back to the same mystery, but their theoretical implications differ.
Christianity views the universe as an arbitrary entity, since God could have made it otherwise. By definition, however, there is only one God, since God is the whole. If the universe is divine, its design is not arbitrary.
From a theological point of view, the only constraint on God is that is be consistent. This, plus observation, are the only constraints in physics. If the universe is divine we can look forward to the day when we understand why the universe as we see it is the only consistent universe, and that (consistent with its divinity) it fills the whole space of possibility.
Our word physics comes from the ancient Greek word meaning the nature, inborn quality, property or constitution of a person or thing. Liddel. The Greeks struggled with the fact that the world is both constant and changing. Aristotle (384-322 bc) concluded that there must be two principles in the constitution of the world: one static, which makes things what they are, which he called form; and one dynamic, which could be moulded by different forms, which he called matter. Aristotle.
In modern times, the names have changed, but this duality in our conception of the physical world remains. The world as a whole is dynamic, pure action. But some things move more slowly than others and others appear not to change at all. We see these as stationary points in the motion, like the top of the upswing of a pendulum. Only those features of the world which do not change can be truly written, since written symbols are of themselves unchanging.
Modern physics is a problematic blend of two theories.
Quantum field theory is particularly interested in structures and events occupying small volumes of spacetime. Physics expect to find meaningful structure down to the Planck scale of time, distance, energy and momentum. It expects to be able to explain this structure with a quantum field theory.
General relativity, on the other hand, is concerned with the large scale structure of the universe. General relativity is a 'classical' (pre-quantum) theory which is proving very difficult to bring into the quantum fold. Physics currently entertains a very wide variety of unifications, each with its advocates, but none with clear supremacy. Deutsch , Greene , Smolin.
Here the task is to work toward the modern theory from the point of view that this is the only possible (consistent) universe. We begin by establishing a correspondence between the universe seen by physics and the transfinite network we have chosen to model god.
Once this correspondence is established, we can begin to see the physical world as the hardware on which the spiritual world is processed. The root of this vision is the recognition that all information in our universe is represented physically. Brillouin, Landauer.
Further reading
Books
| Capra, Fritjof, The Tao of Physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism, Shambala 1991 Amazon.com: 'First published in 1975, The Tao of Physics ... still stands up to scrutiny, explicating not only Eastern philosophies but also how modern physics forces us into conceptions that have remarkable parallels. Covering over 3,000 years of widely divergent traditions across Asia, Capra can't help but blur lines in his generalizations. But the big picture is enough to see the value in them of experiential knowledge, the limits of objectivity, the absence of foundational matter, the interrelation of all things and events, and the fact that process is primary, not things. Capra finds the same notions in modern physics. ...' Brian Bruya Amazon back |
| Deutsch, David, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes - and its Implications, Allen Lane Penguin Press 1997 Jacket: 'Quantum physics, evolution, computation and knowledge - these four strands of scientific theory and philosophy have, until now, remained incomplete explanations of the way the universe works. ... Oxford scholar DD shows how they are so closely intertwined that we cannot properly understand any one of them without reference to the other three. ...' Amazon back |
| Dirac, P A M, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed), Oxford UP/Clarendon 1983 Jacket: '[this] is the standard work in the fundamental principles of quantum mechaincs, indispensible both to the advanced student and the mature research worker, who will always find it a fresh source of knowledge and stimulation.' (Nature) Amazon back |
| Feynman, Richard P et al, and , The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. ... In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands Amazon back |
| Feynman, Richard, QED: The Strange Story of Light and Matter, Princeton UP 1988 Jacket: 'Qunatum electrodynamics - or QED for short - is the 'strange theory' that explains how light and electrons interact. Thanks to Richard Feynmann and his colleagues, it is also one of the rare parts of physics that is known for sure, a theory that has stood the test of time. ... In this beautifully lucid set of lectures he provides a definitive introduction to QED.' Amazon back |
| Genesis, and Alexander Jones (editor), in The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water.' (I, 1-2) Amazon back |
| Greene, Brian, The Elegant Universe: superstrings, hidden dimensions and the quest for the ultimate theory, W W Norton and Company 1999 Jacket: 'Brian Greene has come forth with a beautifully crafted account of string theory - a theory that appears to be a most promising way station to an ultimate theory of everything. His book gives a clear, simple, yet masterful account that makes a complex theory very accessible to nonscientists but is also a delightful read for the professional.' David M Lee Amazon back |
| Hawking, Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time , Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity ... leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.' Amazon back |
| Liddell, and Scott, A Lexicon: Abridged from Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, Clarendon Press 1963 Advertisement: 'The Abridgement of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon is intended chiefly for use in Schools. It has been reduced to its present compass by the omission I. Of passages cited as authorities .. II. Of discussions upon the Derivation of words; III. Of words used only by authors not read in Schools ... ' Amazon back |
| Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. ... this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity (general relativity).' Amazon back |
| Newton, Isaac, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica , Harvard University Press 1972 One of the most important contributions to human knowledge. First translated from the Latin by Andrew Motte in 1729, Amazon back |
| Pais, Abraham, 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford UP 1982 Jacket: In this ... major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire ouvre. ... Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography ... including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.' Amazon back |
| Pais, Abraham, Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press 1986 Preface: 'I will attempt to describe what has been discovered and understood about the constituents of matter, the laws to which they are subject and the forces that act on them [in the period 1895-1983]. ... I will attempt to convey that these have been times of progress and stagnation, of order and chaos, of belief and incredulity, of the conventional and the bizarre; also of revolutionaries and conservatives, of science by individuals and by consortia, of little gadgets and big machines, and of modest funds and big moneys.' AP Amazon back |
| Smolin, Lee, The Life of the Cosmos, Oxford University Pres 1997 Jacket: 'Smolin posits that a process of self-organisation like that of biological evolution shapes the universe, as it developes and eventually reproduces through black holes, each of which may result in a big bang and a new universe. Natural selection may guide the appearance of the laws of physics, favouring those universes which best reproduce. ... Smolin is one of the leading cosmologists at work today, and he writes with an expertise and a force of argument that will command attention throughout the world of physics.' Amazon back |
Papers
| Bennett, Charles L, "The Cosmic Rosetta Stone", Physics Today, 50, 11, November 1997, page 32. "Microkelvin variations in the cosmic microwave background encode a wealth of information about the origin and composition of the universe". back |
| Turner, Michael S, and J A Tyson, "Cosmology at the millennium", Reviews of Modern Pnysics, 71, 2, April 1999, page S145-S164. Quote: 'There is now a substantial body of observations that support directly and indirectly the relativistic hot big bang model for the expanding universe. Equally important, there are no data which are inconsistent. This is no mean feat: The observations are sufficiently constraining that there is no alternative to the hot big bang consistent with all the data at hand. ... There are indeed many open problems in cosmology, such as the age, size and curvature of the Universe; the nature of the dark matter and details of how large-scale structures form and how galaxies evolve - these issues are being addressed by a number of current observations. But the evidence that our Universe expanded from a dense hot phase roughly 13 billion years ago is now incontrovertible ... .'. back |
Links
| APS Physics Related Resources on the Internet back |
| Cambridge University Cambridge Cosmology Cosmology, black holes, cosmic strings, inflation, quantum gravity. back |
| International Astronomical Union IAU: Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams back |
| International Solar Energy Society The International Solar Energy Homepage back |
| Landauer Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process Rolf Landauer: Abstract: 'It is argued that computing machines inevitably involve devices which perform logical functions that do not have a single-valued inverse. The logical irreversibility is associated with physical irreversibility, and requires a minimum heat generation, per machine cycle, typically of the order of kT for each irreversible function. The dissipation serves the purpose of standardizing signals and making them independent of their exact logical history. Two simple, but representative, models of bistable devices are subjected to a more detailed analysis of switching kinetics to yield the relationship between speed and energy dissipation, and to estimate the effects of errors induced by thermal fluctuations. back |
| NASA Microwave Anisotropy Probe 'The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe is a NASA explorer mission measuring the temperature of the cosmic background radiation with unprecedented accuracy. This map of the remnant heat from the Big Bang provides answers to fundamental questions about the origin and fate of our universe.' back |
| The National Academies Cosmology: A Research Briefing 'Advisors to the nation (United States) on science, enginering and medicine' back |
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