During the understanding of our world, a paradigm shift happens when we explain the observed phenomena in terms of a fundamentally new pri...
During the understanding of our world, a paradigm shift happens when we explain the observed phenomena in terms of a fundamentally new principle (paradigm) that helps us understand how the world works in a deeper way than the existing paradigm allows. During the paradigm shift, we see how the world is functioning explained by the new paradigm in a fundamentally new way, which gives new impetus to the process of understanding. A paradigm shift is when the question of how the world works, or a part of it, receives new answers.
The scientific method, the most successful of the methods used to learn about how the world works, also works with the help of assumed and sometimes replaced paradigms. There are many different fields of science, we use many different paradigms. The physics' task is to describe the fundamental workings of the processes that create the complexity of our world in terms of laws and understand them using paradigms.
We can examine the fundamental functioning of our world from many different perspectives, which is why physics also has several, seemingly separate fields. Even if the description of our world has many different areas, and we see this world has many and interconnected and therefore complex and complicated structures and functions, and therefore our description of our world is complex and seems complicated, yet we have only one world, which consists of the same building elements and operates according to the same rules, therefore the laws of physics that serve to describe it, even if utilize apparently completely different laws, these laws still must function in harmonious and cooperating unity.
This is how the world should be described, and indeed this is how the science of physics works for the most part. Even the laws of quantum mechanics, explained by the most foreign paradigm from our ordinary worldview, explained by the wave-particle duality (or even by the multiverse), fit harmoniously and without contradiction with the other laws of physics that describe our world.
However, there is an intersection between the physical laws that should operate according to the expected harmonious cooperation required by our unified worldview, which laws we see as correct individually according to our perceived empirical experiments, but when we try to apply these laws - according how we know them - simultaneously, our perceived, exact and correctly operating laws lead to mutually exclusive descriptions, thus contradicting our fundamental assumption of the unified world. This area is where the smallest dimensions meet the largest masses, quantum mechanics meets the theory of gravity.
Usually, we simply look away when we see the contradiction, because the situation does not usually cause immediate practical problem. It is not necessary to take into account both the known laws of gravity and quantum mechanics at the same time in the world around us.
However, the two realities are existing together at the same time in our world, and our world cannot function in contradiction. Yet our contradictory theories, taken separately, describe the world accurately, in accordance with our observations.
Apparently, we find the contradicting laws of quantum mechanics and the theory of gravitation to be valid because we can only examine nature in conditions where either one or the other functioning phenomenon dominates, and the joint effect can be neglected. The laws that we have found and seem valid must therefore refer to limiting circumstances, and unfortunately, historically we have formulated these laws in such a way that they are mutually exclusive instead of harmonious matching.
We have already encountered similar phenomena in physics. The paradigms of Newton's theory of gravity and Einstein's theory of gravity are mutually exclusive, if one is true, the other cannot be. However, it was successful to write down the general theory of gravity in a way, and since it describes the same phenomenon, it was necessarily to be written down in such a way that Einstein's laws of gravity give rise to Newton's laws of gravity as a limit. Since our experienced world was well described by the form of Newton's laws of gravity, which actually functioning as a limit of a broader theory, it was not necessary to recognize the more general form of gravitation for a long time. In addition, in developing the more general form, we also needed a paradigm shift regarding space and time in our approach to examining the operation of gravity. Interestingly, in this case, mutually exclusive paradigms can serve the evolution of the same scientific field.
In a different sense, quantum mechanics has followed a similar path. In a sense, Newtonian mechanics is the limit of quantum mechanics, if the collapse of the wave-function is interpreted as a limiting state. But in this case also, a paradigm shift, the assumption of a wave-particle duality accompanied the change describing the more correct form of physical laws.
And now we are at the point where the laws of quantum mechanics and gravity need to be written down in a single form, based on the determining theorem that we have only one world. The task does not seem crucial, because the experienced world immediately surrounding us is well described by the laws of the form we have so far established. It is precisely this arrangement that makes the unifying task difficult. It is very difficult to carry out practical experiments or observations where the two phenomena are of comparable magnitude, and by examining the experiments, would become apparent through empirical observations how the laws we have recognized so far should be modified.
The generalization of gravity and the recognition of the laws of quantum mechanics have been supported by the more precise measurements that technological progress has made possible. We do not have sufficiently precise empirical experiments to study gravity and quantum mechanics together yet. The most obvious forms in which the two fields meet are in the existence of black holes and at the birth of the universe, but direct examination of these fields faces objective difficulties.
At the moment, we are proudly marveling at the mutually exclusive equations of quantum mechanics and general gravitation, while we know these must be just limits of a more general law that represents a collectively valid reality.
What's next? How can we approach the next stage of understanding our world?
As long as empirical observations do not help us to extend further our understanding of the world, we are left with theoretical speculation based on hypothetical paradigms. In order to define together the two theories that are mutually exclusive in the formality of existing laws, but in fact, must appear in the current form as limits of a more general law, and needed to be written down as a common set of rules, we will certainly need new paradigm. A paradigm shift must occur in this field of physics.
The task is also made more difficult by the fact that we do not even have well-functioning paradigms that should provide the basis for the description of our precisely functioning gravity and quantum mechanical equations. The paradigms used in these fields are rather explanations that give interpretations to the equations than to be the fundamental foundations of the equations.
For example, the particle approach is the fundamental paradigm of statistical thermodynamics, from which formulas can be derived. The paradigms of gravity and quantum theory are rather just illustrations attached to the formulas. In its current state, space-time is only an illustration used for formulas, since we don't even really know what space is, and the physical existence of time itself is doubted. The wave-particle duality paradigm is also more of an illustration because we must have only one reality. The sum-over-history paradigm, which gives precision to the inherently fuzzy quantum mechanics is more of a procedural method to aid calculation than the physical reality of a particle moving in infinitely different ways back and forth in time. Quantum mechanics also faces fundamental paradigm difficulties, and actually there are several, very different paradigms for interpreting the foundations of the quantum world.
In the absence of empirical experiments, we can only progress towards to unifying gravity and the quantum world if we find paradigm that is valid in both fields and not only describe how these worlds operate, but also leads to concrete laws, and demonstrates the gravity and quantum mechanics how we know them now as limits of a unifying theory.
Which area of the world should be addressed by the paradigm that we are looking for which could explain both areas? The one that underlies both domains. A new paradigm must be identified for our conception of space. In order to be able to treat quantum mechanics and the theory of gravity as a unity, our paradigm about space must be changed.
At the moment, we have rather vague ideas about space, without actually working paradigms. The theory of relativity, which includes the description of gravity, rejects the material existence of space supporting by empirical observation, it renounces the existing material reality called aether, but at the same time sees space - supplemented by the concept of time treated as a dimension - as a four-dimensional structure malleable by matter, and by in reaction, capable of determining the motion of matter. Interactions between space and matter are evident, yet unexplained exactly by paradigm, and hence mysterious in theory of gravity.
Quantum mechanics also treats the concept of space in a contradictory manner. On the one hand, even before quantum mechanics, in the description determined by Maxwell, the corresponding physics also abandons the aether, the material reality of space. It is worth noting that Maxwell's original thought process started from a mechanical space model, based on which he derived his equations, but he considered the space model only as a calculation aid, rather than the existing reality of space. In any case, the mechanical space model helped his thinking in a decisive way to derive the equations. The concept evolving into quantum mechanics, interprets everything as wave, which interacts and “collapse” by themselves to create our observed reality, yet, at the same time, it attributes to space a fundamental and necessary role interpreting it as a material entity, as quantum foam in which particles are constantly created and destroyed.
Different and contradictory paradigms - even contradictory to themselves - are the views of space that currently exist for us. We are trying to free our scientific views from the material reality of space, and abandon its material entity, while at the same time, we are using space as an existing physical structure.
Our needed-to-find new vision of the world must be about reinterpreting space according to a fundamentally new paradigm. It is necessary to develop a new view of space that allows material-structural existence of space, into which the observed reality of quantum mechanics and gravity can then be incorporated without contradiction.
Our current physical worldview is averse to this kind of description, and, referring to experiments, claims that the physical, material reality of space to be impossible. Rather, the task is not to reject the reality of a physically existing structure of space, but rather to find a suitable physical reality for space first as a paradigm, into which quantum mechanics and the theory of gravity as we know can be implemented at first, find the uncontradictory form of these fields, and then to recognize that both theories arise from this concept of space, also, as limits.
In fact, there have already been attempts to unify the two disciplines of physics to create a unified theory of quantum-gravity. The two most-known approaches are string theory and loop quantum gravity. Although these seem promising attempts of descriptions, finding the proper formula by these methods that could adequately describe reality faces significant difficulties. Perhaps, because these theories still do not see space according to a correct, actually valid paradigm.
We are practically using two methods to discover the operating laws of our complex world. One is when we have sufficient knowledge of the components that form the system, and we can understand the laws of the whole by looking at the behavior of these building components. According to the other method, in the case when we do not know the operation of the constituent parts, or even when we do not have knowledge about the constituent parts at all, we can recognize regularities by observing the system as a whole, while observing only the emergent properties of the combined behavior of the constituent parts. The regularities recognized in this way may completely ignore the functioning of the building parts of the system, and in this case, the fundaments of the system may remain completely hidden. Even so, we can define correct description of behavior, but in this case, the parts, and the structure of the system, and hence, the cause and basis of the emergent properties can remain unknown to us.
It is likely that the recognized, contradictory description of behavior are actually emergent properties of the structural constituent parts of the system that are still unknown to us. And we see the apparent contradictions because the recognized emergent properties result from an extremely one-sided view of the whole, when certain properties characteristic of the system become negligible, even to the point of apparently ceasing to exist. Such a description could formally accommodate a contradictory nature of the behavior.
A unifying theory, set up according to the right paradigm, should probably abandon the role of space as a stage that merely provides the place of events. An attempt must be made to treat space according to a paradigm that characterizes it as a physical structure that exists in reality, whose constituent parts have emergent properties, and this operation that form the laws we have recognized so far.
Nature suggests characteristics for the form of the might-right paradigm of space. The most fundamental of these is the Planck constant. Planck constant is perhaps not only a unit of extent that defines the physical scale of our material world, but also has meanings for space itself too. Perhaps space is a structure of Planck-sized constituents, whose interactions with each other create, at the deepest level, our material world, fundamentally the quantum mechanics and the phenomenon of gravity with its functioning laws.
In order to create a unified theory of quantum-gravity, it seems necessary to replace our paradigms regarding space with a more suitable, appropriate model, change to a mechanical model of space. Such hypothesis, for example, is the grid model, which can be found in the thoughts.
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