Should physics even try to converge on a grand unified theory?

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 5, 2016

Cosmology, Intelligent Design}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

From Manjit Kumar at Physics World, reviewing Peter Watson’s Convergence: the Deepest Idea in the Universe, expresses some caution about that:

Wherever experimental evidence can be coaxed out of nature, it suffices to corroborate or refute a theory and serves as the sole arbiter of validity. But where evidence is sparse or absent, other criteria, including aesthetic ones, have been allowed to come into play – both in formulating a theory and evaluating it. Watson believes that because of this, in some ways “physics has become mathematics”, arguing that we are currently “living in an in-between time, and have no way of knowing whether many of the ideas current in physics will endure and be supported by experiment”.

This, Watson explains, deeply worries the likes of cosmologists Joseph Silk and George Ellis. At the end of 2014, Silk and Ellis argued in a Nature comment piece that some scientists appear to have “explicitly set aside” the need for experimental confirmation of our most ambitious theories, “so long as those theories are sufficiently elegant and explanatory”. They further complain that we are at the end of an era, “breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition” of defining scientific knowledge as empirical.

As Silk and Ellis point out, this situation has come about because particle physicists have struggled to go beyond the Standard Model. Their most prominent attempt has been the theory of supersymmetry, but the problem is that no supersymmetric particles have been found, and Silk and Ellis fear that its advocates will simply “retune” their models “to predict particles at masses beyond the reach of the LHC’s power of detection”.More.

Put simply, the war on falsifiability advances.

See also: The war on falsifiability in science continues

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments

Of important related note: Catastrophic epistemological failure results within Naturalism from the Naturalist’s denial of his own agent causality:
Darwinian evolution, and atheism/naturalism in general, are built entirely upon a foundation of illusions and fantasy Excerpt: basically, without God, everything within the atheistic/naturalistic worldview, (i.e. observations of reality, beliefs about reality, sense of self, free will, even reality itself), collapses into self refuting, unrestrained, flights of fantasy and imagination. It would be hard to fathom a more unscientific worldview than Darwinian evolution and Atheistic materialism/naturalism have turned out to be. Scientists should definitely stick with the worldview that brought them to the dance! i.e Christianity! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q94y-QgZZGF0Q7HdcE-qdFcVGErhWxsVKP7GOmpKD6o/edit
Yet, if we rightly let the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into the picture of modern physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, (Newton, Maxwell, and Faraday, among others), then an empirically backed reconciliation between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, into the much sought after 'Theory of Everything', readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Specifically, we have evidence that both Gravity and Quantum Mechanics were dealt with in Christ’s resurrection from the dead in the unfalsified Shroud of Turin:
THE EVENT HORIZON (Space-Time Singularity) OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN. – Isabel Piczek – Particle Physicist Excerpt: We have stated before that the images on the Shroud firmly indicate the total absence of Gravity. Yet they also firmly indicate the presence of the Event Horizon. These two seemingly contradict each other and they necessitate the past presence of something more powerful than Gravity that had the capacity to solve the above paradox. http://shroud3d.com/findings/isabel-piczek-image-formation Turin shroud – (Particle Physicist explains event horizon) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHVUGK6UFK8 (Entropic Concerns) The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead is the correct solution for the “Theory of Everything” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqv4wVP_Fkc&index=2&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5 The absorbed energy in the Shroud body image formation appears as contributed by discrete (quantum) values – Giovanni Fazio, Giuseppe Mandaglio – 2008 Excerpt: This result means that the optical density distribution,, can not be attributed at the absorbed energy described in the framework of the classical physics model. It is, in fact, necessary to hypothesize a absorption by discrete values of the energy where the ‘quantum’ is equal to the one necessary to yellow one fibril. http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/AAPP/article/view/C1A0802004/271 Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural – December 2011 Excerpt: After years of work trying to replicate the colouring on the shroud, a similar image has been created by the scientists. However, they only managed the effect by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers, undermining the arguments of other research, they say, which claims the Turin Shroud is a medieval hoax. Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic. “The results show that a short and intense burst of UV directional radiation can colour a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin,” they said. And in case there was any doubt about the preternatural degree of energy needed to make such distinct marks, the Enea report spells it out: “This degree of power cannot be reproduced by any normal UV source built to date.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-say-turin-shroud-is-supernatural-6279512.html Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Quantum Hologram https://youtu.be/F-TL4QOCiis (Centrality Concerns) The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from Death as the “Theory of Everything” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHST2uFPQY&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5&index=4
Verse:
Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Supplemental notes:
Whereas Naturalists have no empirical evidence whatsoever that the epistemologically self defeating multiverse is real, Theists have very strong evidence for their belief in a higher heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension. This evidence comes from two of our strongest, most verified, theories in science. i.e. From Special and General Relativity respectively: (Oct. 2016) Special and General Relativity compared to Heavenly and Hellish Near Death Experiences – video and notes https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/forbes-regrets-to-inform-us-that-there-is-no-evidence-for-a-multiverse-yet/#comment-619903
bornagain77_{November 5, 2016
November
11
Nov
5
05
2016
06:05 PM
6
06
05
PM
PDT}

As to this comment from the article:
“The two great unifying topics of the 19th century, Watson argues persuasively, were the conservation of energy and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Each was the “fruit” of the coming together of the sciences: of heat, optics, electricity, magnetism and blood chemistry in the case of energy conservation; of geology, palaeontology, anthropology, geography and biology in the case of evolution.”
That comment is laughable. Whereas the unification of heat, light, electricity and magnetism, under the umbrella of conservation of energy, led to many breakthroughs in technology, for instance, the entire field of electronics,,,
Faraday and Henry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electromagnetic_theory#Faraday_and_Henry
,,, Whereas the unification of heat, light, electricity and magnetism under the umbrella of conservation of energy led to many breakthroughs in technology, on the other hand Darwinian evolution, since it is a false theory, is useless as a heuristic for guiding research in science and technology.
"Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss. In the peer-reviewed literature, the word "evolution" often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for "evolution" some other word – "Buddhism," "Aztec cosmology," or even "creationism." I found that the substitution never touched the paper's core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology.,,, Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. This becomes especially clear when we compare it with a heuristic framework such as the atomic model, which opens up structural chemistry and leads to advances in the synthesis of a multitude of new molecules of practical benefit." Philip S. Skell - (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. - Why Do We Invoke Darwin? - 2005 http://www.discovery.org/a/2816 "In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all." Marc Kirschner, Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005 "While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superflous one.” A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, Introduction to "Evolutionary Processes" - (2000). “Truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.” (Jerry Coyne, “Selling Darwin: Does it matter whether evolution has any commercial applications?,” reviewing The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life by David P. Mindell, in Nature, 442:983-984 (August 31, 2006).)
In fact, the pseudo-science of Darwinian evolution is notorious for its failed predictions in science.
Cornelius Hunter: Darwin's Predictions https://sites.google.com/site/darwinspredictions/
Including failed predictions that have caused doctors to commit widespread medical malpractice, i.e. vestigial organs, and have also caused scientists to go down blind alleys for decades, i.e. junk DNA, etc…
Evolution's "vestigial organ" argument debunked Excerpt: "The appendix, like the once 'vestigial' tonsils and adenoids, is a lymphoid organ (part of the body's immune system) which makes antibodies against infections in the digestive system. Believing it to be a useless evolutionary 'left over,' many surgeons once removed even the healthy appendix whenever they were in the abdominal cavity. Today, removal of a healthy appendix under most circumstances would be considered medical malpractice" (David Menton, Ph.D., "The Human Tail, and Other Tales of Evolution," St. Louis MetroVoice , January 1994, Vol. 4, No. 1). "Doctors once thought tonsils were simply useless evolutionary leftovers and took them out thinking that it could do no harm. Today there is considerable evidence that there are more troubles in the upper respiratory tract after tonsil removal than before, and doctors generally agree that simple enlargement of tonsils is hardly an indication for surgery" (J.D. Ratcliff, Your Body and How it Works, 1975, p. 137). The tailbone, properly known as the coccyx, is another supposed example of a vestigial structure that has been found to have a valuable function—especially regarding the ability to sit comfortably. Many people who have had this bone removed have great difficulty sitting. http://www.ucg.org/science/god-science-and-bible-evolutions-vestigial-organ-argument-debunked/ Carter: Why Evolutionists Need Junk DNA - Robert W. Carter - 2009 Excerpt: Junk DNA is not just a label that was tacked on to some DNA that seemed to have no function, but it is something that is required by evolutionary theory. Mathematically, there is too much variation, too much DNA to mutate, and too few generations in which to get it all done. This was the essence of Haldane's work. Without junk DNA, evolutionary theory cannot currently explain how everything works mathematically. Think about it; in the evolutionary model there have only been 3-6 million years since humans and chimps diverged. With average human generation times of 20-30 years, this gives them only 100,000 to 300,000 generations to fix the millions of mutations that separate humans and chimps. This includes at least 35 million single letter differences, over 90 million base pairs of non-shared DNA, nearly 700 extra genes in humans (about 6% not shared with chimpanzees), and tens of thousands of chromosomal rearrangements. Also, the chimp genome is about 13% larger than that of humans, but mostly due to the heterochromatin that caps the chromosome telomeres. All this has to happen in a very short amount of evolutionary time. They don't have enough time, even after discounting the functionality of over 95% of the genome--but their position becomes grave if junk DNA turns out to be functional. Every new function found for junk DNA makes the evolutionists' case that much more difficult. Robert W. Carter - biologist http://creation.com/junk-dna-slow-death Kimura (1968) developed the idea of “Neutral Evolution”. If “Haldane’s Dilemma” is correct, the majority of DNA must be non-functional.
In fact, as hinted at before, Darwinian evolution does not even qualify as a testable science but is more properly classified as a pseudoscience.
The primary reason why no scientist has been able to ‘quantify its dictums’ is because there are no known laws of nature for Darwinists to appeal to to base their math on. In other words, there is no known ‘law of evolution’, such as there is a ‘law of gravity’, within the physical universe,,, etc.. : - November 2016 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/btb-answering-the-id-is-religioncreationism-in-a-cheap-tuxedo-talking-point/#comment-620107
The only thing Darwinian evolution has ever 'unified' has been unemployed fiction writers with new 'just so stories' so that they may have jobs. :)
Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
As to the primary question of the OP, “Should physics even try to converge on a grand unified theory?”, the answer to that question is, YES! But my question is, why do so many physicists even believe there should be a 'theory of everything?'. Despite the fact that many brilliant people apparently deeply believe that it follows naturally that there should be a mathematical theory of everything, that simply is not the case. The belief that their should be a mathematical theory of everything simply does not follow from the math, but is a belief that is born solely out of Theistic presuppositions. The next few quotes should suffice to get this point across:
The Limits Of Reason – Gregory Chaitin – 2006 Excerpt: “what Gödel discovered (in his incompleteness theorem) was just the tip of the iceberg: an infinite number of true mathematical theorems exist that cannot be proved from any finite system of axioms.” http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/sciamer3.pdf BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010 Excerpt: ,,,The physical universe is causally incomplete and therefore neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. The world of space, time, matter and energy is dependent on a reality that transcends space, time, matter and energy. This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world,,, Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency – a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” Anything else invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality. Nowhere is this destructive consequence more evident than in the machinations of multiverse cosmology to “explain” cosmological fine-tuning. Cosmic inflation is invoked to “explain” why our universe is so flat and its background radiation so uniform. All possible solutions of string theory are invoked to “explain” the incredible fine-tuning of the cosmological constant. But the evidence for cosmic inflation is both thin and equivocal; the evidence for string theory and its extension, M-theory, is nonexistent; and the idea that conjoining them demonstrates that we live in a multiverse of bubble universes with different laws and constants is a mathematical fantasy. What is worse, multiplying without limit the opportunities for any event to happen in the context of a multiverse – where it is alleged that anything can spontaneously jump into existence without cause – produces a situation in which no absurdity is beyond the pale. For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. Universes do not “spontaneously create” on the basis of abstract mathematical descriptions, nor does the fantasy of a limitless multiverse trump the explanatory power of transcendent intelligent design. What Mr. Hawking’s contrary assertions show is that mathematical savants can sometimes be metaphysical simpletons. Caveat emptor. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ “Our monotheistic traditions reinforce the assumption that the universe is at root a unity, that is not governed by different legislation in different places.” John D. Barrow Stephen Hawking’s “God-Haunted” Quest – December 24, 2014 Excerpt: Why in the world would a scientist blithely assume that there is or is even likely to be one unifying rational form to all things, unless he assumed that there is a singular, overarching intelligence that has placed it there? Why shouldn’t the world be chaotic, utterly random, meaningless? Why should one presume that something as orderly and rational as an equation would describe the universe’s structure? I would argue that the only finally reasonable ground for that assumption is the belief in an intelligent Creator, who has already thought into the world the very mathematics that the patient scientist discovers. = per Evolution News and Views “So you think of physics in search of a “Grand Unified Theory of Everything”, Why should we even think there is such a thing? Why should we think there is some ultimate level of resolution? Right? It is part, it is a consequence of believing in some kind of design. Right? And there is some sense in which that however multifarious and diverse the phenomena of nature are, they are ultimately unified by the minimal set of laws and principles possible. In so far as science continues to operate with that assumption, there is a presupposition of design that is motivating the scientific process. Because it would be perfectly easy,, to stop the pursuit of science at much lower levels. You know understand a certain range of phenomena in a way that is appropriate to deal with that phenomena and just stop there and not go any deeper or any farther.”,,, You see, there is a sense in which there is design at the ultimate level, the ultimate teleology you might say, which provides the ultimate closure,,” Professor of philosophy Steve Fuller discusses intelligent design in Cambridge – Video – quoted at the 17:34 minute mark https://uncommondescent.com/news/in-cambridge-professor-steve-fuller-discusses-why-the-hypothesis-of-intelligent-design-is-not-more-popular-among-scientists-and-others/
bornagain77_{November 5, 2016
November
11
Nov
5
05
2016
06:02 PM
6
06
02
PM
PDT}

In a word, no, Denyse. We know all atheist pipe-dreams are doomed to eternal frustration, don't we ?Axel_{November 5, 2016
November
11
Nov
5
05
2016
04:24 PM
4
04
24
PM
PDT}

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply