How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

Philip Cheung

You have a slogan: “The first principle of cosmology must be: There is nothing outside the universe.”

In different formulations of the laws of physics, like Newtonian mechanics or quantum mechanics, there is background structure — structure which has to be specified and is fixed. It’s not subject to evolution, it’s not influenced by anything that happens. It’s structure outside the system being modeled. It’s the framework on which we hang observables — the observer, a clock and so forth. The statement that there’s nothing outside the universe — there’s no observer outside the universe — implies that we need a formulation of physics without background structure. All the theories of physics we have, in one way or another, apply only to subsystems of the universe. They don’t apply to the universe as a whole, because they require this background structure...

You’ve recently proposed such a theory — one in which, as you put it, “the history of the universe is constituted of different views of itself.” What does that mean?

It’s a theory about processes, about the sequences and causal relations among things that happen, not the inherent properties of things that are. The fundamental ingredient is what we call an “event.” Events are things that happen at a single place and time; at each event there’s some momentum, energy, charge or other various physical quantity that’s measurable. The event has relations with the rest of the universe, and that set of relations constitutes its “view” of the universe. Rather than describing an isolated system in terms of things that are measured from the outside, we’re taking the universe as constituted of relations among events. The idea is to try to reformulate physics in terms of these views from the inside, what it looks like from inside the universe.

I know from your book that you’re a realist at heart — you believe strongly in a reality independent of our knowledge of it — and therefore, like Einstein, you think quantum mechanics is incomplete. Does this theory of views help complete what you think is missing in quantum theory?

Einstein — as well as someone called Leslie Ballentine — advocated an “ensemble interpretation” of the wave function [the mathematical object that represents a quantum system]. The idea was that the wave function describes an ensemble of possible states. But one day, I was sitting in a cafe working and suddenly I thought: What if the ensemble is real? What if, when you have a wave function describing a single water molecule, it’s actually describing the ensemble of every water molecule in the universe?

So whereas normally we would think that there’s one water molecule but an uncertainty of states, you’re saying that the uncertainty of states is actually the ensemble of all the water molecules in the universe?

Yes. They form an ensemble because they have very similar views. They all interact with one another, because the probability of interaction is determined by the similarity of views, not necessarily their proximity in space.

It’s a theory about processes, about the sequences and causal relations among things that happen, not the inherent properties of things that are. The fundamental ingredient is what we call an “event.” Events are things that happen at a single place and time; at each event there’s some momentum, energy, charge or other various physical quantity that’s measurable. ....we’re taking the universe as constituted of relations among events.

This appears to be an attempt at a "theory of everything" - all of reality. If so, I think it is a non-starter, because like so many other naturalistic materialistic theories of reality and cosmology Smolin seems to make the initial assumption that all that exists in our reality is material, leaving consciousness out in the cold as some sort of epiphenomenal illusion. This automatically makes the theory invalid, since consciousness is stubbornly still existent, pervasive and is even what is responsible for the scientist's thought in coming up with this theory. I don't think that thought, or any other property of consciousness is material or measureable.

This appears to be an attempt at a "theory of everything" - all of reality. If so, I think it is a non-starter, because like so many other naturalistic materialistic theories of reality and cosmology Smolin seems to make the initial assumption that all that exists in our reality is material, leaving consciousness out in the cold as some sort of epiphenomenal illusion. This automatically makes the theory invalid, since consciousness is stubbornly still existent, pervasive and is even what is responsible for the scientist's thought in coming up with this theory. I don't think that thought, or any other property of consciousness is material or measureable.

From his book Time Reborn:

'The problem of qualia, or consciousness, seems unanswerable by science because it's an aspect of the world that is not encompassed when we describe all the physical interactions among particles. It's in the domain of questions about what the world really is, not how it can be modeled or represented.

Some philosophers argue that qualia simply are identical to certain neuronal processes. This seems to me wrong. Qualia may very well be correlated with neuronal processes but they are not the same as neuronal processes. Neuronal processes are subject to description by physics and chemistry, but no amount of detailed description in those terms will answer the questions as to what qualia are like or explain why we perceive them.'

'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations. Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains.

On further aspect of consciousness is the fact that it takes place in time. Indeed, when I assert that it is always some time in the world, I am extrapolating from the fact that my experiences of the world always takes place in time. But what do I mean by my experiences? I can speak about them scientifically as instances of recordings of information. To speak so, I need not mention consciousness or qualia. But this may be an evasion, because these experiences have aspects that are consciousness of qualia. So my conviction that what is real is real in the present moment is related to my conviction that qualia are real.'

I was following this and agreeing with it as I read.

We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations. Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains.

But then I stumbled as the paragraph clumsily, in my opinion, ends with the word "brains". I'm aware of lots of evidence of correlations. However, I'd relate consciousness to a whole-body phenomenon, in one view, but also as something not corresponding with the same physical boundaries. It isn't necessarily the case that the boundaries of the body, much less so the brain, correspond with the boundaries of consciousness - if the term 'boundary' even applies.

I was following this and agreeing with it as I read.

But then I stumbled as the paragraph clumsily, in my opinion, ends with the word "brains". I'm aware of lots of evidence of correlations. However, I'd relate consciousness to a whole-body phenomenon, in one view, but also as something not corresponding with the same physical boundaries. It isn't necessarily the case that the boundaries of the body, much less so the brain, correspond with the boundaries of consciousness - if the term 'boundary' even applies.

I agree with this but I figured it was important to point out Smolin is not a materialist.