Particles

The Main Story

It’s not about the little details of human sob stories. It’s about the amazing journey of fundamental particles to the present day universe and the incredible complexity of our world. Particularly life and consciousness.

The story is in how particles evolved into conscious, thinking, talking humans. How could it get so personal when it came from raw matter with no guidance or plan?

That is the main story.

Physicalism

The universe and the world and everything reduces to physical particles. And physical particles behave and interact according to physical causes. Everything including human actions and thought are due to physical causes, physical laws.

At no point in the development of the universe or during the process of evolution has there been anything  but particles interacting due to physical laws. There has never been any purpose or meaning or goal or guidance.

Fundamental atomic particles obey physical laws that have no purpose. And that’s all there is.

Emergence

Does consciousness or self or subjective experience emerge from electrochemical reactions in a way that they can’t be reduced back to physical events.

Well: if a person is thinking about something at a given time and that time is frozen - and all the fundamental particles and physical properties of that person are recreated and reconstructed at a different location, then it is true to say that you have created the same person with the same thought content. And not only that but also with the same future - if the world around that newly created person is also duplicated atom for atom.

Any complex emergence, or what we call emergence, is simply physics getting too complicated for “us” to comprehend. Especially the emergence of “us”, (or a person).

When a physical copy, atom for atom, of a complex structure such as a thinking person is created elsewhere, it is instantaneously created. It has no history whatsoever. It has no story leading up to its next actions. Yet being physically identical it must go on thinking and behaving exactly as the original person who is operating as a result of past causes - a long, long history leading up to this moment.

This shows that everything can be reduced to physics. Because if a purely physical world is constructed identical to this one, it will go forward in time in exactly the same way.

The world, and all events within it are purely physical, and even the most unimaginably complex event can be reduced to the behaviour of particles and fields.

In a Whoosh

You have to go from fundamental particles to a symphony orchestra, in a whoosh! It has to all join up.

First there is no symphony orchestra, and then particles morph into a symphony orchestra in a traceable path. The path is very long and complicated and intricate, but the particles have been able to follow that path without any help or guidance. Except for the laws of physics. The laws of physics don’t actively act, they just silently apply.

The symphony orchestra, no matter how intricately arranged, is still particles. Time doesn’t have to come into it. You can attempt to whoosh from particles to orchestra and back again in an instant. The same goes for any moment of experience, and you can get better at it.

Forward or Backward

The present state of the universe is deterministic and can be wound forwards or backwards like a movie - in principle. It is all and only particles: in the beginning, now, and in the future. The present state, ie: now, which is also me and my objective awareness, is also all and only particles under the same physical laws as always. You can wind it forward or back, it’s all inevitable. You wouldn’t even have to account for the Olympic Games. Particles did it all. All by themselves.

At Particle Level

It would have to be that you could explain from the big bang to now as purely and simply the physical interaction of particles.

You can say the solar system formed with planets and the sun, and you can describe life as natural selection working on DNA. But it’s not really necessary to go into that detail. You can bypass it. Each particle interacts with the universe in the way it must according to physical law and that is enough to get from the big bang to the present moment.

Even the evolution of the human kidney or the words in a conversation are the result of particle interaction only, even though it seems that more meanings and complications must be involved.

They are, if you look from that level, but you can explain it all without shifting from the particle level.

Each and every particle, each single particle interacts with its neighbours and that’s it. The behaviour of one particle can be traced as if a ball colliding on a billiard table. When group behaviour emerges as seems to occur in the case of DNA, that only happens because of all the individual behaviours going back in time. Group (or complex) behaviour is still each particle acting in accordance with physical law in its given surroundings. Particle behaviour can , and does, extend all the way to life, thoughts, and aircraft assembly lines.

It’s one particle at a time behaving as determined by its surroundings. How the surroundings got to be purposeful or having causation is not the case. Every particle is determined to do what it does, without any further input since the big bang.

Nothing took over and created this. This is what happened by itself.

This is exactly what happened.

Emergent Properties

Emergent properties, macroscopic theories, all theories can be wrapped up in the microscopic properties - ie particle physics. The only cause and effect mechanism is always held in the present moment state of all the particles in the universe. There is no need of ‘remembered’ or ‘discovered’ or ‘recorded’ theories because all future behaviour is contained in any given present moment state of the particles. 

If a particular moment was duplicated instantly elsewhere, having no past, then the future for that copied universe would be the same. Everything evolves from each moment and each moment is simply a particular arrangement of particles, caused by the previous arrangement, and causing the next.

A Sweep of Thought

In understanding the evolution of life you can go from a replicating molecule to homosapiens in a continuous sweep of thought, and you have to be able to sweep from big bang to ‘tea for two’ because that’s what the universe has done. It’s gone from particles to peoples’ chats and symphony orchestras, so why can’t we do the same with clear understanding?

It’s gone from particles to symphony orchestras, which is actually from particles to particles, because orchestras are particles.

Big bang, particles, orchestras.

Thinking, understanding, not understanding.

It’s all the same constituents. Even the creation and organisation of it all, is particles.

Levels of Explanation

Some physicists say it's wrong to talk at different levels of explanation - eg talking humans, stay at that level. Talking biochemistry - stay at that level. Molecular physics - stay there. Quantum physics - stay at that level.

But that may not be a valid argument:

I personally see there is quantum physics, and everything follows from that. And all the levels above that are reducible back down to quantum particles. At once! In a flash! You have to understand it’s quantum particles creating and causing everything about a human being or a virus, every moment.

You can work scientifically at any level (say in neuroscience or psychology), but it’s reducible to quantum particle interactions at any moment you choose. Not in practice, but in principle. And in truth. In fact the particle physics of every situation is the basic truth, and the only real truth.

The initial conditions of all the particles in the universe have led to this moment. You can say chatting to a friend over a cup of tea is outside this definition. But it isn’t! That too is ‘only’ particles in action.

Particles all the Way Down

What isn’t particles? This thought, this writing, this reading, A discussion with a friend. A breeze, a feeling of fear or wonder. A reason to turn and look. It’s all particles, conscious or not, living or not.

Every movement of mind or matter are the same particles in motion. You and I are particles and we, like all matter , are controlled by the physical laws of nature. 

This current arrangement of particles now, dictates the very next arrangement according to the laws. We can’t do anything about it. We don’t need to do anything. It just happens accordingly. If you worry about it that’s just particles worrying.

The particles at the beginning of the universe are still bouncing around in this arrangement or that. And here we are!

Random Particles

How much random behaviour exists in the subatomic world? And what is the effect on us?

Telescopes can see galaxies at the edge of the universe and for them to be able to focus the incoming light into an image of that galaxy, the photons must have been travelling for over 13 billion years according to the physical laws of nature. The photons after all that time are able to still perfectly represent an image of that galaxy, all within the diameter of the telescope, a few meters at most.

If those photons exhibited random behaviour, they had 13 billion years to do it. Yet they all lined up in the telescope to produce the image of their original birth place.

Search and Ponder

You search and ponder and arrive at the conclusion that the universe consists of particles in motion under physical laws. That’s the beginning and end of it. Then you are committed to the conclusion that humans and conscious thought are also particles in motion. This agrees with science but not with intuition or common sense.

The next difficult step is to explore sweeping from any situation to particles in action. For example: people talking at the dinner table (an obvious truth) to particles in motion (another obvious truth). Go from one to the other with whatever necessary logical thinking reveals the two descriptions as connected, as linked, as one. As one either present time right now, or as one over time - from the beginning of matter evolving into the present state of matter.

The Mystery Maintained

Describing life and the universe as particles does not diminish the magic and wonder. Everything can be seen as a moving , swarming, interacting mass of particles. And  out of this apparent chaos appear patterns of varied matter, and objects and life itself.

It culminates in the appearance of consciousness which is also particles in motion. Physical laws direct the whole process as the universe unfolds in the one only way it can.

Even though every detail is determined, the present and future are totally unpredictable due to the immense complexity, and so the mystery of our future is maintained.

A Result of Things

All that a single particle ever does is interact with other particles in ways that are 100% predictable. The single particle’s changes and movements are caused solely by the surrounding environment of that particle (ie- the rest of the universe. If a particular particle ends up in the conscious brain of a human being then it is still solely influenced by the surrounding particles in its vicinity and beyond. Lots and lots of trillions of particles operating as part of a large organ of the body are all individually in the same situation, ie - reacting to their surroundings. There is no place or space where something formed or was created by the particles  that suddenly took over and influenced itself or has any independent agency and ability to do anything at all. All particles and their assembled objects are always acting as a result of things, not a cause of things. Everything that happens is caused. Everything is caused by a previous state. There is no room for choice or self causation. All events influencing a particle are in place already, each moment. There is  no ‘outside’ influence. The whole thing, that particle, and all the other particles, move as one thing, the only way they can. The whole universe moves as one thing with all effects moving simultaneously.

The complicated actions and lives of human beings are included in this one determined movement, and include the human experience of free will, choice, and ability to change the world. All of these skills and associated feelings, being matter, are determined in the same way, in the same one movement of everything.

How particles Behave

It’s best to work out what the particles do, how they behave. They are what makes up everything.

They have certain rules and behaviours that they conform to, and science has worked out many of the physical laws. These laws don’t need to be imposed on the particles. They are part of the properties of a particular type of particle. There is no need for anything else in the universe , except the particles.

As time has evolved the universe has evolved, in exactly the way that it must. Particles have formed atoms and molecules and planets and people. This had to happen and it only required the particles with their unique qualities in the beginning.

Life, brains, consciousness, and subjective experience are all further results of particle interaction. It only took the particles in the beginning, the laws of physics, and 13.8 billion years fo this current universe to exist today.

All the particles did was to bounce around according to their laws and this is what you get.

Nothing else intervened.

Nothing needed to.

How Could They do it?

It’s tempting to think that rocks, trees, and earthworms are particles in action - but not human minds and culture. There seems no way of viewing a ballroom dance as particles obeying physics. The two descriptions of the event seem totally unrelated and totally complicated in their own interactions.

But particles and physical laws do not mind complications and snowballing interactions that are incalculable to us. Particles just obey the laws whether there are one, two or zillions of them intertwined. They build atoms and people with complete ease.