Mainstream science estimate of the 7 biggest unanswered questions in physics

Here's philosopher Alvin Noe's view on whether or not we could ever figure out how life began:

"Darwinism is silent on the question of life's first beginnings, however. This is not a hole or an omission; it represents no unfulfilled promise. The theory of evolution is not a theory of that.


How did life first happen? How did it begin? We don't know. As Peter Godfrey Smith puts it, in his elegant review of Thomas Nagel's recent book: "We still know very little about how life began, and it is hard to assess whether this problem will eventually yield to 'normal science' or whether a more dramatic innovation is needed."

That's not the situation when it comes to understanding the origin and variety of species, extinction events and the like. There are lots of unanswered questions, of course. For instance, we are still filling in the details in our account of the great exodus from Africa that led to our population of the greater planet. But we do know that we don't need dramatic innovation to move forward. "Normal science" will do the work.


Godfrey Smith's point, and I agree, is that we don't have this same confidence when it comes to an understanding of life's beginnings. This is probably not, I would say, due to the fact that the relevant events happened a long time ago. Our problem isn't merely historical in nature, that is. If that were all that was at stake, then we might expect that, now at least, we would be able to make life in a test tube. But we can't do that. We don't know how."

From: http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02...not-really

I would like to tackle your first question about the nature of matter as substance.  Would you like to explore it further?

I guess, if you mean the ultimate nature of matter, which is more a matter of philosophy or metaphysics than science. A few of my thoughts on this:

As a practical matter scientists seem to generally consider it better to concentrate on the math and not be bothered about what anything (including matter) really is - the same applies to quantum mechanics. 

It is known that mass consists of a host of fundamental particles, starting with quarks. It is not known what the ultimate nature of these particles is, what their substance really is, what mass really is, but we do know what it is not - little balls of hard, heavy stuff. Einstein's formula says that mass and energy are the same thing. Einsteinian theory, quantum mechanics, and numerous experiments seem to show that particles and larger objects with mass have the ultimate nature of waves, but without a medium. 

My view is that since the only thing we know for certainty that exists is our own consciousness including our conscious perceptions of the apparent solid external world, maybe the only thing that ultimately exists is pure consciousness. The ultimate nature of mass, of particles, might then be pure consciousness, or pure information held in consciousness. 

Another way of looking at it might be from the perspective of our reality perhaps being some sort of virtual reality hyper-computer simulation. I think the case for this is fairly compelling, because of the way the analogy of an iterative computer calculation/simulation makes sense of quantum mechanical phenomena. For instance, electromagnetic waves, and the wave identity of particles (having a calculatable wavelength) are not really waves in any sort of medium, but behave exactly as if they are waves of calculation. Is this the calculation of the simulation "software"? Limit constants like the Planck length would then be analogous to the simulation iteration interval or calculation accuracy/resolution.

I think our human consciousness must be separate and apart from the simulation software. For various reasons, if there is any truth to the simulation theory (or merely a metaphor?) we must be the observers and participants in it, but not part of it. 

In this case, in this train of thought matter would ultimately be pure information held in consciousness.

Here's philosopher Alvin Noe's view on whether or not we could ever figure out how life began:

"Darwinism is silent on the question of life's first beginnings, however. This is not a hole or an omission; it represents no unfulfilled promise. The theory of evolution is not a theory of that.


How did life first happen? How did it begin? We don't know. As Peter Godfrey Smith puts it, in his elegant review of Thomas Nagel's recent book: "We still know very little about how life began, and it is hard to assess whether this problem will eventually yield to 'normal science' or whether a more dramatic innovation is needed."

That's not the situation when it comes to understanding the origin and variety of species, extinction events and the like. There are lots of unanswered questions, of course. For instance, we are still filling in the details in our account of the great exodus from Africa that led to our population of the greater planet. But we do know that we don't need dramatic innovation to move forward. "Normal science" will do the work.


Godfrey Smith's point, and I agree, is that we don't have this same confidence when it comes to an understanding of life's beginnings. This is probably not, I would say, due to the fact that the relevant events happened a long time ago. Our problem isn't merely historical in nature, that is. If that were all that was at stake, then we might expect that, now at least, we would be able to make life in a test tube. But we can't do that. We don't know how."

From: http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02...not-really

Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin considers the origin of life to be the central problem of biology. I guess being a faithful Darwinian he doesn't admit to any problem with macroevolution and the Cambrian Explosion.

But he admits to the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe. Instead Koonin ingeniously proposes that at least one of these hypotheses, maybe the RNA world one, is actually quite probable (maybe inevitable), if the cosmological model of eternal inflation and an infinite multiverse is the truth. With the eternal inflation hypothesis, all macroscopic histories permitted by laws of physics are repeated an infinite number of times in an infinite multiverse. In other words, Koonin invokes the anthropic selection principle in an infinite multiverse to explain the origin of life itself. He believes that the reason why we see life evolve in this universe is because, if there are an infinite number of universes, then no matter how beyond vanishingly improbable it is in any one universe, at least some of these universes will spontaneously by chance evolve life eventually able to reason about the evolution of life. 

So Koonin admits that the odds of life evolving are vanishingly small. He then invokes an infinite multiverse of different universes to explain it. 

Of course such multiverse concepts are basically unscientific, unverifiable, unfalsifiable and against the Occam's Razor principle of parsimony. A last resort materialist approach to dealing with some rather intractable problems, like the origin of life and the evident "fine tuning" for life in the universe. 

It looks like at this time the only real candidates for the origin of life answer are intelligent design (source unspecified) and an infinite multiverse. Other suggestions?

Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin considers the origin of life to be the central problem of biology. I guess being a faithful Darwinian he doesn't admit to any problem with macroevolution and the Cambrian Explosion.

But he admits to the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe. Instead Koonin ingeniously proposes that at least one of these hypotheses, maybe the RNA world one, is actually quite probable (maybe inevitable), if the cosmological model of eternal inflation and an infinite multiverse is the truth. With the eternal inflation hypothesis, all macroscopic histories permitted by laws of physics are repeated an infinite number of times in an infinite multiverse. In other words, Koonin invokes the anthropic selection principle in an infinite multiverse to explain the origin of life itself. He believes that the reason why we see life evolve in this universe is because, if there are an infinite number of universes, then no matter how beyond vanishingly improbable it is in any one universe, at least some of these universes will spontaneously by chance evolve life eventually able to reason about the evolution of life. 

So Koonin admits that the odds of life evolving are vanishingly small. He then invokes an infinite multiverse of different universes to explain it. 

Of course such multiverse concepts are basically unscientific, unverifiable, unfalsifiable and against the Occam's Razor principle of parsimony. A last resort materialist approach to dealing with some rather intractable problems, like the origin of life and the evident "fine tuning" for life in the universe. 

It looks like at this time the only real candidates for the origin of life answer are intelligent design (source unspecified) and an infinite multiverse. Other suggestions?

The origin of life and the origin of the physical universe should probably be considered separately, but life as we experience it exists here in the material world. Both need an explanation of origin. Could a material world exist without any conscious entity around to experience it? This seems impossible to know. I don't think anybody has even come close to answering the "why something rather than nothing" question without resorting to "because God".

When we look  at the "where did life come from" question, both panspermia and intelligent design just put off the ultimate reckoning temporarily to somewhere else. I think neither of these things science (or reason) can really help us with. We know more about the physical world than ever before, but we also don't know shit.

How did life first happen? How did it begin? We don't know. As Peter Godfrey Smith puts it, in his elegant review of Thomas Nagel's recent book: "We still know very little about how life began, and it is hard to assess whether this problem will eventually yield to 'normal science' or whether a more dramatic innovation is needed."

From: http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02...not-really

The article by Noe has a link to a book review where Thomas Nagel is quoted.

  But in his cool style Mr. Nagel extends his ideas about consciousness into a sweeping critique of the modern scientific worldview, which he calls a “heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense.”

I strongly agree with both viewpoints from these well-respected academics.  The answers may not be so complex, as to be hard to discover -- but they may be too simple and fundamentally different than we thought. 

The origin of life and the origin of the physical universe should probably be considered separately, but life as we experience it exists here in the material world. Both need an explanation of origin. Could a material world exist without any conscious entity around to experience it? This seems impossible to know. I don't think anybody has even come close to answering the "why something rather than nothing" question without resorting to "because God".

When we look  at the "where did life come from" question, both panspermia and intelligent design just put off the ultimate reckoning temporarily to somewhere else. I think neither of these things science (or reason) can really help us with. We know more about the physical world than ever before, but we also don't know shit.

It seems that the multiverse concept/hypothesis also just passes the buck or kicks the can down the road so to speak, since it leads inevitably to the next even deeper question of "where did the multiverse come from", or "why the multiverse"?  It seems that all such answers (even all possible answers) have this dilemma. This is the old philosophical dilemma of the infinite regress.

An infinite regress arises when, after we propose a reason or explanation for something, we ask what are the justifications for this reason itself. If this reason or explanation is to count as knowledge, it must itself be justified with another reason, and so on, ad infinitum. The problem of the infinite regress was a critical argument of the Skeptics in ancient philosophy, and is still a problem. All scientific enquiry inevitably ends up in the ancient philosophical dilemma of the apparent invalidity of any proposed "knowledge", and the ultimate need for a metaphysical/theological solution. Maybe this is one of the reasons why modern mainstream science has such a disdain for philosophy, and it makes the final proposed question in my list really the last possible one: "why is there something not absolutely nothing?".

I guess, if you mean the ultimate nature of matter, which is more a matter of philosophy or metaphysics than science. A few of my thoughts on this:

As a practical matter scientists seem to generally consider it better to concentrate on the math and not be bothered about what anything (including matter) really is - the same applies to quantum mechanics. 

It is known that mass consists of a host of fundamental particles, starting with quarks. It is not known what the ultimate nature of these particles is, what their substance really is, what mass really is, but we do know what it is not - little balls of hard, heavy stuff. Einstein's formula says that mass and energy are the same thing. Einsteinian theory, quantum mechanics, and numerous experiments seem to show that particles and larger objects with mass have the ultimate nature of waves, but without a medium. 

My view is that since the only thing we know for certainty that exists is our own consciousness including our conscious perceptions of the apparent solid external world, maybe the only thing that ultimately exists is pure consciousness. The ultimate nature of mass, of particles, might then be pure consciousness, or pure information held in consciousness. 

The above is an excellent description of the current situation.  My worldview, in which I have warranted belief in the evidence for paranormal communication, embraces fully the data of physics.  It does reject causal closure of the material aspects of reality and asserts that there is an equal view onto reality that is addressing the generative capability of information processes.

Causal closure - of the physical - is a linear proposition.  Infinite regression can happen in a linear progression, with a top and bottom.  A reality that has multiple generative levels faces no such issue.  There can be synchronized multiple causes and there can be catalytic causes between information and materials.  The "take" of Philosophical Materialism is to presume that substances have "essential natures" that carry properties.   The search for the "essence" of matter (what makes up not its structure, but its inner properties) has been the source of materialism.

Today we know (or should know) that this is impossible.  Information has shown to be a real factor in computing and predicting the real world.  It has been shown in quantum information research that an electron or any particle doesn't have a layer of meaningful properties that emerge for its "magical core of matter".  Each particle structure carries 1 bit.  There no reserve of matter "meanings" stored in its essence.  Substance in the real world is a haze of probabilistic positions.

There are different meanings for each state and each level of organization of materials - that can be described as information.  The properties of particle arrangements can change with the level of organization between quarks, atoms, molecules, medium objects and galactic objects.  Real-world meanings, in my worldview, turn out not to be at the core of matter/energy objects.  But they come from a dynamic interplay between fixed substances such as formal information and vectors of change and transformation, with forces and meanings.

There is a plank scale and a bottom to the size of a particle.  hence a bottom-end to the reduction of real-world particles.  Yet, in a non-linear and very dynamic way we are discovering how information and matter/energy are predictable together as a system that comes out just like the one we can measure.

The 7 Biggest Unanswered Questions in Physics

5. What happens in the gray zone between solid and liquid?

It would seem that the true answers to just some of these questions could have paradigm-shattering effects on science, if orthodoxy doesn't suppress any such new understandings. 

A perfect example of the consequences of matter not having some "deep nature" from which its properties emerge was in the news today.  From the Nobel prize announcements as reported by the NYTimes:

 To overcome this problem, Dr. Dubochet dipped the samples in liquid nitrogen-cooled ethane. At minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 196 Celsius), the water molecules froze so quickly that they had no time to line up in crystals, solidifying instead into a random structure, more like glass. That enabled the electron microscope technique to view the embedded proteins instead of the ice.  

In this case the crystalline structure of ice (a property of H2O) is altered by a change in duration effecting the sequence of molecular alignment during freezing.  Sequence is not a material thingy, it is structured information.  

For me the biggest materials science question is - why are we still conflating the information in systems with the empirical facts of matter/energy?

The above is an excellent description of the current situation.  My worldview, in which I have warranted belief in the evidence for paranormal communication, embraces fully the data of physics.  It does reject causal closure of the material aspects of reality and asserts that there is an equal view onto reality that is addressing the generative capability of information processes.

Causal closure - of the physical - is a linear proposition.  Infinite regression can happen in a linear progression, with a top and bottom.  A reality that has multiple generative levels faces no such issue.  There can be synchronized multiple causes and there can be catalytic causes between information and materials.  The "take" of Philosophical Materialism is to presume that substances have "essential natures" that carry properties.   The search for the "essence" of matter (what makes up not its structure, but its inner properties) has been the source of materialism.

Today we know (or should know) that this is impossible.  Information has shown to be a real factor in computing and predicting the real world.  It has been shown in quantum information research that an electron or any particle doesn't have a layer of meaningful properties that emerge for its "magical core of matter".  Each particle structure carries 1 bit.  There no reserve of matter "meanings" stored in its essence.  Substance in the real world is a haze of probabilistic positions.
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A partial response at this time:

To deny causal closure in nature seems to reject a couple of centuries of the development of modern science, where innumerable systems and subsystems and parts of nature have been found to in fact be machines or mechanisms of some sort having causal closure. 

By "generative capability" do you mean creation of organized complex mechanisms? I don't think that "information processes" can by themselves generate organized, specified, complexity. This is in large part things like machines or mechanisms. That is, unless by information processes you mean sentient intelligence, which I think is fundamentally more than pure information processing. Prominent examples of machines and mechanisms in nature are living organisms incorporating very many kinds of sometimes irreducibly complex systems and subsystems that can best be analyzed by engineering principles. The only known source of organized, specified, complex machines and mechanisms is human intelligence.

A partial response at this time:

To deny causal closure in nature seems to reject a couple of centuries of the development of modern science, where innumerable systems and subsystems and parts of nature have been found to in fact be machines or mechanisms of some sort having causal closure. 

My response was unclear.  The assumption of a closed system doesn't exclude two or more systems being closed unto themselves.   I affirm the practice and method of a causally closed analysis in physical space and time.  The events will be formulated so that the units of measure of mass and force are fully descriptive of the primary phenomenon.  From subatomic to molecular structure; a model of mechanism can be built from how material structures are formed and they transform and interact.

However, the same can be applied to the meaningful environment where we sense cultural signals and do mental work. Instead - structured information objects are the focus of attention.  The rules of transformation and units of measure are of a different LoA than physics and chemistry.  (level of abstraction)

My simple example is: when a computer fails, it is possible to address the problem with a look to the physical electronics....
or with a look to the program code.  Both circuits and code are natural things.  Both are needed, but are different models of what is there in the realty of the computer.  Both methods are valid and are complimentary!

I am arguing for problem solving in science to acknowledge the separate LoA between informational environments and physical ones.  Between physical objects and the informational objects that precede and project into the future any physical phenomena. And between measurements of mass and force at one level; as separate from bits, truth tables, algorithms and complexity at another.

There is no objective material quality of complexity, its a judgement by observers giving meaning to specified circumstances.  On the other hand G. Chaitin has a lot to say about algorithmic complexity in information theory.  Complexity can be measured in relation to systems and states.

 According to Gregory Chaitin, it is "the result of putting Shannon's information theory and Turing's computability theory into a cocktail shaker and shaking vigorously." Algorithmic information theory principally studies complexity measures on strings (or other data structures).

I am just saying that if we want to understand our data about reality - multiple levels looks to be a pragmatic fact of how we deal with what we experience.  We don't measure "mind" very well.  However, we are starting to be scientifically proficient at measuring the communication of information.