Introduction to the topic
I have also elected to include meta-physics, which is defined as our state of being that lies outside of physics.
The first major work was the treatise by Aristotle which you can read in full should it be of interest by clicking here.
Scientist’s use a variety of tools, but there is no singlescientific method in use, notwithstanding a general evidence based approach.
Hence, a theory may be considered “empirically adequate”, to be validated under observable phenomena, but competes against alternatives in relation to its theoretical claims.
But by the time we reached the early part of the 20th century just about all of the famous physicists including Einstein, Schrodinger and Heisenberg were debating the philosophical issues associated with their discoveries in relativity and quantum mechanics which i will cover in much more detail later on.
As far as theories go Lee Smolin favours virtuosity as outlined in his book entitled ‘The Trouble with Physics’, for theories in respect to fundamental physics.
For Smolin a theory must be both capable of being proven experimentally and also make a new prediction, to provide an answer that disproves the old theory, whilst ensuring the new theory is verifiable.
Early beginnings
To reiterate the first formal paper on meta-physics, a term used then to describe our state of being outside of physics was by Aristotle (322 BC-384 BC) whose ideas remains firmly etched into our societal framework.
His ideas remained virtually unchallenged for over a thousand years, remaining relevant in the Christian, Muslim and Jewish religions from a religious philosophical perspective.
Aristotle as a major influence on the Abrahamic
Religions, particularly during the 12th & 13th century
when they became available in Latin. He
was also a major Influence
on Aquinas (1225-74) in respect to his idea that knowledge is gained from the
reports of the senses. His influence extended to ideas about the soul was part of
the form of the body inspired Aquinas.
In regard to his physics, Aristotle remained hostage to the notion of a central earth, where the stars and planets revolved around it.
It was thought then impossible for the earth to move on its axis and orbit the sun as otherwise you must feel the rush of wind in your hair just as you would when riding a horse. Many simply believed humans might fall apart if exposed to speeds exceeding that of a galloping horse. John Gibbon- Science A History -1543-2001.
But Aristotle possibly also developed the first plausible theory of gravity, although he never attempted to test it.
How he arrived at such a plausible theory was to add a spirit or aether to the four basic elements of earth, water, fire and air to deduce the nature of things.
It was patently obvious that water and earth move down and air and fire go up, so that the greater the mass of a substance the faster it will fall, proportional to its mass.
His theory was the earth must therefore be the centre of the universe, whose principal element being earth, had reached its destination. The earth wasn’t moving because a stone drops at your feet, as otherwise it would fall further on in line with a moving earth.
His explanation for the movements of the planets and stars was to say they were set in a series of concentric spheres revolving around a series of poles of aether through a Pole star.
This Aristolean model was refined and developed into a mathematical model by Ptolemy to give approximate positions for the stars which was useful for religious and navigational observances.
But as it turns out, everything Aristotle said about gravity was wrong.
A century later, Aristarchus of Samos came to the conclusion the Sun, not the earth was the centre of the Universe
16th & 17th Century
But remarkably this idea of a sun centric universe did no catch on until it was revived by Copernicus in the 16th century, to form part of his 1543 publication which talked about the revolution of the celestial spheres. This period marked the beginning of what we call modern day science as civilization "emerged from the Dark ages".
Copernicus posited the idea of a central Sun, which eant Aristotle’s notion of gravity must be false. Although Copernicus’s model of a sun centred universe was also incorrect, it proved to be a useful framework to explore other possibilities by mathematicians and astronomers.
In 1660 in London the ‘College for the Promotion of Physic-Mathematical Learning’ was opened which then became the Royal Society. By that time Copernicus had introduced the idea of a moving earth, for which he risked ex-communication from his church, followed closely by a declaration his theory on the planatory movements was heretical and consequently banned.
Galileo’s observations finally refuted Aristotle’s ideas of a fixed central planet earth, but he also disagreed with his metaphysics. Galileo attributed GOD only to the primary causes (or those not understood) with the remainder designated secondary causes comprehensible as mechanical processes.
He suffered stiff opposition as his note to Kepler testifies:
‘I wish, my dear Kepler that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or Moon or my telescope.
You may also be interested in a little poem he composed when refuting the Aristotelian notion of an unchanging celestial sphere.
No lower than the other stars it lies,
and does not move in ways around,
than all fixed stars-nor change in sign or size.
All of this is proved on purest reason's ground:
Later he was obliged to renounce his beliefs to avoid going to the "rack" or the "stake" or possibly both.
John Gibbon- Science A History -1543-2001.
In 1667 Newton took a 7-year fellowship with Trinity College, dependent on swearing an oath "I will either set Theology as the object of my studies or take holy orders at the allotted time as statutes prescribe.
Newton demonstrated instead of two forces underpinning planetary movements there was only one, represented by the force of gravity.
The reason was that particle is attracted to one another in the cosmos. His unifying laws then accounted for the position of the planets, known only up until Saturn.
A century later in 1781, William Herschel, discovered a light point previously thought to be a star, but now could be identified as the planet Uranus. This observation in turn led to the identification of Neptune.
But the question remained; what mechanism underpinned such a gravitational force and how did it work.
Rene Descartes(1596- 1650), was critical of his work and proposed a solution whereby space was comprised of tiny ‘corpuscles’ whose fluid- Iike qualities sweep around the Sun, pulling the planets along, like water swirling around a plug hole.
Newton’s response ruled out this proposition as he was able to point out the globes of the planets and comets move freely and continually, unrestrained by any kind of corporeal fluid proposed by Descartes.
What took place during this period was a separation between physics and natural philosophy. This was made possible since Galileo and Newton had defined the laws of planetary motion discovered earlier on by Kepler.
Newtonian physics subsequently became the catalyst for a philosophical stance that postulated a clockwork universe. The radical proposition took hold that nothing other than physics is needed to understand the physical universe, despite the fact this idea was rejected by Newton.
Newton was the first of the great Scientists to show the laws of science are indeed universal laws that effect everything. For Newton and many of his contemporaries GOD was the architect of it all. Newton even went on to say God was a "hands on” architect who might interfere from "time to time". John Gibbon- Science A History -1543-2001.
18th Century
At the beginning of the 18th century Linnaeus expanded the botanical horizons by providing descriptions of 7,700 species of plants and most species of animal known in Europe then. Linnaeus's belief was that man belonged in the same genus as the apes, a belief validated in the 98 % correlation between the DNAof humans, chimpanzees and gorillas.
It was only because of Linnaeus’s fear of incurring the wrath of the theologians that "Homo Sapiens" sit in unique and isolated splendor as the sole member of a genus.
Many argue “that 2% difference makes all of the difference.
Linnaeus believed his work was uncovering GOD's handiwork, but made no room for evolution.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who influenced by Newton.
Kant recognized the problem of the human mind and provided a solution as to how we can escape from the confines of our mind to discern a reality of an outside world physically beyond it.
Kant’s solution posited that prior known truths are insufficient to describe metaphysics but from prior knowledge (which he called A priori the mind is capable of joining up with analysis to understand how to proceed. This may seem a very straightforward matter for us today, but it was a major move forward in thinking then to run counter to existing philosophy.
His ideas ensured a much better understanding about how the mind joins past knowledge and links to analysis to posit judgments about our interaction with the outside world.
Kant argued the mind gives objects some of their characteristics in accord with its compliant nature to bring uniformity within its structured conceptual capability.
Kant’s transcended argument however does not mean philosophically he saw grounds for ideas such as, ‘GOD is a perfect being.’ as Kant maintained that the mind was a tool to formal structuring that enables the conjoining of concepts into judgments, but that the mind possesses a priori for judgments, not A priori of judgments. Nietzsche on the other hand, regarded Kant’s ideas to be fatally flawed. He thought his views did not reflect our existential reality, since he (Kant) relied too heavily on his universal A priori laws.
19th Century
The so called "enlightened science" brought new discoveries; Carbon Dioxide, the Steam Engine, Electricity, Oxygen and Water as an element, all provided a boon to the Industrial Revolution. There were many more dramatic developments, but undoubtedly the most important was Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which, for the first time offered scientific explanation of evolution.
Much of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection remains in place today and his theory is generally accepted within modern theology except for fundamentalist sectors who loosely describe themselves as “Creationists” relying on literal interpretation of the Old Testament. It also prompted more interest in Pantheism in which GOD is seen to be in all things as creation continues.
In the 19th century science moved away from the interest or hobby of a privileged few to a well-populated profession. No longer could a single individual have such a profound impact except of course for Darwin.
20th & 21st Century
In 1905 Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity was published. The foundation stone was the constancy of the speed of light and it was the only absolute truth that nothing exceeds the speed of light. By the time he developed his theory, there was experimental evidence that the measured speed of light is always the same, irrespective of how the person undertaking the measuring is moving.
Because nothing exceeds the speed of light any motion through space time absorbs time so that anyone taking off on a very long rocket journey and returning to earth much later would be younger than an equivalent earth bound counterpart.
No longer could space or time be thought of without the other as space time was shown to be a major player in the unfolding cosmos.
But post the Second World War scientists tended to shy away from the philosophy of science to the extent claims were made that philosophy was becoming irrelevant and had not kept pace with science. But in many respects the scientific commentaries continued to reference what could be described as Platonic concepts and ask the big questions which are clearly meta–physical in nature.
In many ways, modern astronomy – astrophysics – only began at the beginning of the 20th century, precisely because of the application of photographic techniques to preserve images of the stars. Various discoveries allow astronomers to work out the masses of the stars, the temperature as relating to its color and ensures measurement of the distances to the stars. Furthermore one can determine the kinds of materials manufactured inside stars, scattered across space by stellar outbursts described as a supernovae, being principally the birth and death of stars.
The beginning of the quantum revolution (study of sub atomic particles called protons and electrons) meant light could be seen behaving either as a wave or as a stream of particles, referenced as quantum mechanics.
It is called quantum mechanics because there is no single quantum theory. The basic mathematical formulations were developed in the 1920's, which deal with the position or momentum of a single particle or group of a few particles as to how they change over time.
Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, underpinned quantum mechanics i e., where two photons are entangled any successful measurement of either will force the other distant photon (however far away- even were it to be on the other side of the universe) into a corresponding same spin cycle rather than any expected haze of probabilities.
One can never know when a current quantum field theory will not be superseded by a much more powerful model that may not even be involved in fields or particles.
The limiting factor involving all physical theories that are tested to show that they work, is we can never be certain as to what degree they correspond to “reality.” A claim that they do, shunts the discussion back into the realm of meta-physics. Hence, there doesn’t seem to be any empirical way to determine ultimate reality. Having read avidly all of Stephen Hawking’s books one also notices his cosmological concerns that diverge into metaphysical questions such as the ultimate origins of life and the beginnings of the universe and so on. Like others in his field, they unwittingly become philosophers, even as some continue who criticise philosophy, from whom they claim they are divorced.
Modern day phenomenon
The recent sighting of a black hole, some 50 billion light years from the earth, brought back memories of first reading the late Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time ’. For Hawking, together with Roger Penrose, were the pioneers in proving the existence of black holes beyond doubt, by observations of the surrounding activity which validated what Einstein had first reluctantly concluded, as a corollary to his general theory of relativity.
Amongst other things, what Hawking was able to do was to explain in graphic detail, just how dramatically Einstein’s general theory of relativity disproved the previous notion that the universe operated like a giant clockwise movement, more or less principally a product of Newtonian science. Rather, Einstein talked about curved Space -Time, an amalgam of 3 dimensions of space and time combined to make up a continuum.
The inevitable result is the formulation of singularities (black holes), the consequence of stars, over immense periods of time, becoming unimaginably heavier and dense, to emerge as white and brown dwarfs, to the heavier Neutron Stars. A Neutron star about 20 km in diameter would have the mass of about 1.4 times our Sun. This means that a neutron star is so dense that on Earth, one teaspoonful would weigh a billion tons!
Given sufficient initial stellar material, stars will eventually shrink to where their size is zero and their density is infinite, when you have a so called singularity.
At the heart of every black hole is a singularity where it is believed nothing can escape. That is what we see today with the event horizon as matter is drawn inward into the invisible center. Einstein reluctantly concluded that nothing can escape from a black hole where the laws of science break down.
Conclusion
We have made tremendous strides in technology and engineering feats that has underpinned space exploration since those heady days. But in terms of Einstein’s contribution he remains the bedrock or gold standard upon which new discoveries and observations come to light. What I think this summary suggests is we only have a tenuous grasp on reality. Ultimately our immediate actions, governed by the uncertainty principle is likely to lead to outcomes we don’t envisage in our youth.This calls for a more compassionate world in policy and management advancement. Although we tend to think of science in terms of great discoveries by individual geniuses on whose shoulders we rest, John Gribbin shows us more often than not it is rather the “hard slogging” step by step building process by ordinary people that wins out in the end. This painstaking work is undertaken usually without “lust” for glory but to satisfy our intense curiosity about the world and how it works.
All of our ground breaking major scientific discoveries are counter intuitive and most discoveries did not follow on logically to seem at first to be against common sense. Science tells us how things are but not logically how things are. However, the fact that a philosophy is underpinned by a false scientific notion does not in itself discredit the whole of the body of that work. All revelations in science reveal is that a particular model of reality conforms to a verifiable observation from that perspective. New scientific discoveries and insights will prompt questions about the status quo for debate and continue to be the catalyst for changed thinking. Maybe there are fields of compassion to be discovered but that another story. .
