What's the deal with matter?
At the human scale, it's something like a rock. You can hold it in your hand; it
feels weighty; it looks solid; it has sharp boundaries; it has continuous
extension and definite location. It's there. If you look at it with an electron microscope,
the solidity is mostly empty space. There are a few dark splotches
scattered around that you can call molecules of matter. At still greater magnification those
molecules become mostly empty space, with a few dark splotches scattered around
that you can call atoms of matter. But you can't hold them in your hand; you
can't weigh them on your bathroom scale; the boundaries are fuzzy and trail off
into the toe of a probability curve. The splotches don't have definite locations,
they are merely regions of increasing probability function. The idea of
continuous extension is nonsensical at this scale. They are no longer like a
rock. Calling them matter is only analogous, not homologous. Atoms are not really there.
You've entered the realm of cognitive operations. You've entered the land of
metaphor. You don't know what you're talking about. You're imagining things.
By that I mean that you're making images of sensations and concepts that you judge to be unity.
Those images and judgments have their roots in the human scale of everyday life,
but at the atomic scale that connection is no longer direct. It's one step removed by an interface of
instrumentation. Electronic sensors see the atoms and their signals are interpreted by
computer programs to be sensible to everyday-life nerves. What we think
we're seeing is not necessarily what the instruments might think they are seeing.
Scientists should have come to grips with this matter of perception with the
advent of quantum mechanics. Some observations of atoms and their
constituents were easily interpreted as interactions of particles, which were
imagined to be tiny marbles. But other observations were interpreted as the
interaction of tiny waves. Particles and waves are contradictory; they're
paradoxical. You can't have it both ways, and to make sense. So, what were these observations really?
Instead of recognizing that they were interpreting the observations metaphorically, scientists dodged the
contradictions in what became known as the Copenhagen interpretation. This was
the foundation for the famous debates between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein
during the Solvay conferences in 1927 and 1930. They declared that there was
no deep reality, no sense to be had, thereby sidestepping or even denying the
nature of perception as a creative cognitive activity. One consequence was to abrogate the
goals of science, not only to predict, but also to understand phenomena.
Richard Feynman, in his lectures about quantum mechanics advised students to
give up trying to understand and just shut up and calculate. Presumably this was why one of the early
proponents of quantum mechanics said that quantum mechanics wasn't really science.
Humans seem to be hardwired to interpret the output of their nerves in materialist images. It served us well for
survival purposes, but for purposes of a hypothetical ‘real truth’ or ‘true reality’
it's inadequate. As a materialist I must confess that I don't know what matter is.
The closer I look, the more matter turns out to be not there; a field of view with
an idea of solidity hiding somewhere. I think that there must be some ‘thing’
there, but ‘thing’ is an idea, a cognitive operation, an interpretation of sensations and ideas. It's a judgment
that a selection of sensations and ideas is a unity, a whole. Ideas matter, but the idea of matter is not matter.
The idea isn't all there is to it. The pain in my shin, when I knock against the
coffee table in the dark, is not an idea. I don't imagine the pain. It's raw data
that's given, unbidden. And I hope I won't be given any more of it. Only
after I stopped whimpering and try to tell someone, if only myself, what happened, do
ideas, ideas of things like coffee tables, creep in. If I were to be consistently
philosophical, I'd contemplate the question, what else could it be? But, while I'm
seeing stars, which I presume are not part of the coffee table idea, I'm not
interested in alternative theories. I only want one that will enable me to
avoid that datum of experience in the future. I don't care if the theory is
atomic or platonic, I only want results. Neurology studies show that, even before
we're born, our cognitive operations are operating. By the time we're old enough
to be aware of some of them, we're in mid-thought. We're developing and
revising and replacing theories that came from...we know not whence.
Our theories and their assumptions are far from any foundation, far from any
justification. What we need, all we need, are results. Not secure foundations, not settled assumptions.
The need for results, for a result that's good enough to achieve the goal at hand,
biases our philosophy and our science. We tend to stop looking when we found
the first adequate result. I call it the finders fallacy. We then jump to the
conclusion that it's the one and only ’true result’. If someone else proposes
a different result, we begin fighting over it. The ideal of a ‘search for truth’
quickly becomes a ‘war for dominance’. When the goal at hand changes, the ‘one
and only’ truth changes. We call it a paradigm shift and label the previous
truth a falsehood, a superstition. This is how the gravity and gas models replace
the epicycle and deferent models. This is how the Electric Universe model may
replace the Standard Model of cosmology. Science is provisional. Its theories are
true, provided the assumptions, the initial propositions, are true, or insofar as they are true.
Furthermore, we're not aware of many, perhaps most, of the assumptions. We
remember, if we've read any history, that some of them have changed over time, and perhaps they will again.
Science occupies a middle position between true and false, a mutable
position, a mortal position. It occupies a human position. We start theorizing at some arbitrary
location, in intellectual mid-air, and unwittingly commit an excess. We lay a
cornerstone, intending to build a cathedral of ultimate truth on it.
From that high point, our enterprise sinks into conceit, arrogance and
absurdity. If we are made aware of that excess, we may leap to a second excess of
thinking that if a theory isn't absolutely true, nothing is true and anything goes. And then we have the
experience of pain in our shins. Matter, in the sense of pain in our shins, only exists at the scale of coffee
tables. We don't stub our toes on atoms or stars. But we do understand atoms and
stars by picking out their similarities with coffee tables and making metaphorical connections.
Matter appears in mid-scale and we build metaphorical universes on it. Afterward,
we make excuses and call those excuses foundations, confusing metaphor with pain.
Matter is not a given, it's an assumption. Sensation is given and it's meaningless
until we interpret it with some idea. We know from experience that neither one is
reliable. We need to adjust or even occasionally to replace them as we gain
further experience. Life is struggle; life is learning. Knowledge, the interpretation
of sensations and ideas, is a useful tool, not a hypothetical mind of God.
What seems so substantial in the beginning, is shredded by the hurricanes of concept and conceit.
And of course, this analysis of perception into dual categories of sensations and ideas, omits what is
probably the most influential aspect of all: passion, likes and dislikes. But I'll
leave that topic for you to ponder. We know a few specific things for a
little while. Ptolemy’s geocentric model for 1,400 years. Newton's gravity
model for 300 years. The Electric Universe model for... who knows.
We know enough to get us through the night, so we can struggle with it again in the morning.
But we don't know so much that we can take tomorrow off.