I have been putting off for some time getting into the basics of the atom. Other columns have mentioned an atom formed by a single elementary particle, and other columns have mentioned the nature of that single elementary particle, but no column has focused on the nature of the atom and the single elementary partied that makes it up. Because I work from the basis of a consistent picture of physical phenomena, there will of necessity be some overlap among the columns. It is a problem that I have always faced in writing the volumes of The Copernican Series because to come up with a consistent picture of physical reality, it is necessary to first produce a viable procedure and then it is necessary to produce an explanation that doesn't just explain this or that little slice of reality, leaving the rest of the reality a blank, or open to inconsistent, but not contradictory explanations. It is necessary to explain everything, how life forms and evolves, how it obtains sentience, how the universe operates and how it is that sentience can observe not only the universe, but itself observing the universe, in short what the mind is and how it operates, and then the explanation has to go on and consistently explain the nature of the forces in our existence, a mechanical explanation for gravity, for the force that causes planets to rotate on their axes and orbit other planets and the sun, how the stars move to form the galaxies, the actual nature of magnetism, electricity and light, how it is we can interact with the reality we can observe and why it is that we interact with one another the way that we do.
I covered procedure in the first column by pointing out the difference between Baconian process and the Newtonian process of mathematical empiricism. Under Bacon, reality is a blank slate. It operates. We know it operates because we can see things on Earth falling and we can see things in the heavens moving. We know there are forces. While Bacon himself was born before there was much concern about the nature of light and magnetism, and before there was any knowledge at all about electricity, we know that light, electricity and magnetism are forces that are all somehow tied together, but we don't know how. We know we have minds that can observe reality and we know that those minds produce a picture of ourselves observing reality, but we haven't got the foggiest idea what those minds are.
Under the Baconian process, we are dealing with things that we will never know the answer to because they are not things we can pick up and look at, put in museums under glass and see operating with our eyes. However, because we know that they exist, the purpose of our efforts at understanding reality, the purpose of science, has to be attempting to produce concepts that will allow us to tap into the unseen and unknowable in a way that can benefit us on a technological basis. We may never know the answers, but we need working hypotheses that will allow us to experiment with reality in order to see whether reality responds to those working hypothesis.
When reality does respond to the working hypothesis, according to Baconian thought, we may have workable technology, but we really don't know the nature of the forces that we are dealing with. As a result, we have to continually update our working hypotheses as additional facts come to light and we have to continually tinker with our technology in the light of the updated hypotheses in an attempt to improve, make it reflect the reality in which we exist more exactly.
In the Baconian process, hypotheses are evaluated both by their ability to prod nature and their consistency. Because it takes resources to prod nature, only those hypotheses that explain the most with the least assumptions should be used.
This procedure is contrasted with the Newtonian mathematical empirical process that makes an extraordinary assumption at the outset. The empirical assumption is that the universe was created with a set of underlying laws that are immutable. These laws can only be discerned on a mathematical basis. The laws are discovered by creating a set of mathematical assumptions which are required to predict an unknown fact about reality. If the unknown fact is subsequently found, then the mathematical assumptions used to produce the prediction are accepted as scientific facts, or more appropriately to the language of empiricism, as the immutable laws that underlie the operation of the universe, as something called objective reality.
Under Newtonian thought, there has to be a creator, although empirical science disavows the possibility that there was a creator to put the laws in place. The founders of empiricism, Newton and his coterie of followers, were all deeply religious individuals who believed firmly in the existence of God and empiricism did not edit God out of the equation until the end of the 18th Century. This leaves empiricism looking for laws put in place by a creator that didn't exist, a destruction of the basic assumption of empiricism.
When a process believes that it can use mathematical equations to discover the underlying laws that operate the universe, then the discovery of those laws places the hypotheses which are what the laws actually are, in the position of facts, but not just ordinary facts, facts that are more factual than any facts we could discover in the universe. Facts that disagree with the laws empirical science has uncovered are simply not facts, or are facts that are working as a result of some variation of the laws mathematics has yet to uncover.
In addition, the Newtonian process puts a premium on the order of discovery of the laws that then become the controlling facts of our reality. If we create a law that excludes interpretations of later discovered facts, the laws we create to explain those later discovered facts will be distorted by the reality excluded by the previously accepted law. Further, discovered facts no longer are useful in constructing hypotheses because they can no longer be predicted, having already been discovered. This produces hypotheses based entirely on other hypotheses predicting facts that are, to say the least, elusive, and thus whose discovery becomes a question of belief.
But then the whole system of empirical laws requires belief. We end up basing our technology on the musings of dead men who had absolutely no knowledge of reality, musings that were made centuries ago and which can never be questioned. Any growth in understanding has to account for the preexisting laws because those laws are immutable. The result is an inconsistent hodge-podge of concepts that don't explain anything and are not usable by those attempting to prod reality in order to produce a technology that benefits everyone.
Because empirical science requires mathematical equations to predict facts, it excludes all of the information that we need to have in order to successfully produce a technology that reflects reality. Because questions of force and motion, questions of the nature of light, electricity and magnetism are not quantifiable in mathematical terms, but have to be quantifiable, they are given symbols, names, and used in equations as their measurable result. Empirical science does not care about the actual mechanical nature of gravity, or the force that causes planets to orbit and rotate, or the physical structure of light, electricity or magnetism, because its mathematical equations can not deal with mechanical explanations, explanations that actually explain. Thus gravity becomes a property, the motion in the solar system and the galaxies and the universe becomes the result of historical forces, light is claimed to not exist, and then when it is found to exist, named as a photon, the understanding of electricity is excluded because of prior laws dealing with light and it is reduced to an electron, a simple name, a moving charge, and magnetism just exists as a force.
In fact, the deeper empirical science becomes mired in its subservience to existing laws created by people who were totally unaware of the actual nature of reality, the more it resorts to naming, the number of elementary particles proliferating to the point that their numbers had to be restricted by international agreement, and even then, end runs were made by giving the accepted roster of particles different qualities, color and charm and the like.
Because empirical science is a process of uncovering the laws put in place by a creator it refuses to acknowledge, it is simply a naming process that results in no understanding and inconsistent outcomes.
Lest you think there is a real dispute going on here, there are approximately one hundred million practicing empiricists in the world, and one Baconian, but that Baconian, me, in setting out to describe all of physical reality in a consistent manner, asked the first question anyone who actually wants to know how reality operates would ask. I asked, what does all of reality have in common?
The answer is quite simple. Newton, in fact, had the answer three hundred years ago, he just didn't have enough knowledge to put it to practical use. The answer is, all of reality must be made up of a single elementary particle.
Empirical science looks at reality, sees an effect occurring, and then names a particle after that effect. Thus, it looks at electricity and creates the electron, it looks at weight and creates the neutron, it looks at the need for electrons to move and it creates the proton, it looks at light and creates the photon. It is a grade school process, putting names to what we see, but that's the major activity of empirical science.
I, on the other hand, asked the question, if everything were made up of a single elementary particle, then what would the properties of that particle be so that the particle could then be used to explain all of reality? Figuring out how to discover the properties of a single elementary particle that explained all of reality was not a difficult task. All I had to do was look at reality to see what it consisted of. I found that it consisted of two things.
First, I found that matter occupied nothingness. This is a fairly obvious conclusion. The space in which the matter we see exists is the absence of matter and the absence of matter is nothing. We don't have to spend time trying to figure out how big the universe is because nothing is just that, nothing. It has no size. We might ask, what space in nothingness does matter occupy, but that would not be a question that would produce a productive answer, an answer we could use in crafting our technology in order to make it more accurately reflect reality. As reality, rather than mathematical prediction, is the only way we have to check our concepts concerning reality, the contribution of scientific theory to technology is the only true measure of science, which is literally the examination of reality.
Once we know we are dealing with matter, then the question we have is what do we know about matter? First we know that it is solid. Therefore, whatever the basic particle that makes matter up is, it must have the property of attraction. It must be able to be attracted to all other particles so that those particles can come together to form the solid matter that is us and the reality in which we exist. That is basically the property we assign to the electron, although we require the electron to be attracted to something positive as a result of our mistaken analogy of a particle to a magnet. While we think of like charges repelling, the fact is, a property of attraction is one that would attract all other particles. For reasons laid out in Atoms, Stars and Minds, I called this first property the property of propensity, that the basic elementary particle has a propensity to occupy the position of all other elementary particles.
The next thing we know about the matter that is us and our reality is that it comes apart when it undergoes increased temperatures, or in my terminology, when it combusts, or undergoes the process of field replacement (See 2/12/05 Column). When this process occurs, it produces light which, if everything is made up of the same elementary particle, is made up of the same thing that makes up matter. We know one thing about light. It travels at about 186,000 miles per second if it is unrestrained. That's the same speed electricity travels if it is unrestrained. Therefore, we know that the elementary particle has another property, the property of motion. When the particle is at rest, when it is unrestrained in its normal state, it is moving at 186,000 mph. This is its property of at rest motion.
Thus, we have an elementary particle with two properties, the property of affinity propensity, a propensity to occupy the space of all other particles and a property of at rest motion, when it is unrestrained, it is traveling at the speed of light. Instead of looking at effects, saying the effect is called a particle, naming the particle and then giving the particle the property of the particular effect it was created to explain, I have created a particle with two properties, and the test of that particle is its ability to explain all of the effects empirical science has manufactured particles for.
At the outset, it is clear that the particle can explain things empirical science can't, for instance energy. Because the two properties are opposing properties that exist in the same particle, they interact with one another to produce the motion in our environment. When the affinity propensity is dominant, and solid matter is formed, there is a whole lot of potential energy in that solid matter, the restrained at rest motion of the particles bound together, and when the at rest motion is allowed to overcome the affinity propensity, we have what empirical science is clueless about, we have energy.
The next column will begin the two part discussion of the atom in the light of this single elementary particle.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com