The Big Picture

In the absence of an authentic discourse the world is inundated with a bunch of pretentious worldviews. I call them pretentious because, for one thing, they all fall short of the fullness that the term worldview now implies. We have various views-of-the-world like socialism, capitalism, conservatism, liberalism, libertarianism, fascism, communitarianism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam et al. And they all conform to the traditional definition of worldview in that they offer a comprehensive view of the world from a particular standpoint. However, in this age of globalization, electronic communication and information processing particular standpoints have been rendered invalid. Each and every standpoint is constantly overtaken by every other as traditional boundaries separating and protecting them have vanished. To hold fast to a particular standpoint now requires enormous obstinacy that is manifest in the rise of extreme fundamentalism, which, from Rush Limbaugh to Osama bin Laden, calls for the elimination, in one way or another, of all who do not share a particular point of view.

Thus, as we see, there is no worldview that actually speaks to the world as a whole. What we have is a rage of ideologies in cacophonous concert all attempting to impose their particular standpoint on the world as the one and only truism. Such attempts are nothing new. It’s what defines the history of the civilized world. In the past, however, these impositions were the prerogative of an organized state ruling over a bounded territory. Today states of mind take precedence over states and map the landscape via electronic media where armies of like-minded individuals, infused with one dogma or another, can participate and attempt to enforce their view of the world as sacrosanct.

There is a universally accepted dogma at work here whatever the ideology or cultural conceit, namely that human beings are all participating in an exercise that lies beyond the plane of obvious existence. We believe our natures are molded and guided by some influence from the beyond. We believe that the inspiration for all our ideologies comes from a realm apart from the natural one.

But how can this realm be feeding us conflicting views of itself and the world? How can one god be visiting different beliefs in different gods upon us?

Good questions, but we are reluctant to give them any play for fear of undermining belief itself and thus our very own belief as well. But such reluctance gives tacit approval to the violence of extremists. For, if it is a legitimate claim that, according to divine decree, one’s belief system is the one and only truism then what earthly limits can realistically be put on proponents of a particular worldview in their efforts to establish its absolute supremacy?

For fear of the consequences no believer wants to dwell where uncompromising challenges exist. Desire to believe trumps all. Reason and knowledge must not be allowed to encroach upon anyone’s belief system because it poses a threat to our own.

Believers of all kinds share a distrust of science if not downright disdain. But there is not a unifying worldview to be found among their various belief systems. They create divisiveness. It is only through knowledge of the world that such a worldview can be found. A genuine worldview that does not need to be imposed on the world but is derived from it. A worldview that, by default, includes everyone. A worldview that puts everything in place. Everything. Including traditional belief systems, which, it will be shown here, are derived, not from a divine realm, but from the very fabric of the natural world.

The worldview that will be presented here constitutes a departure from just about everything now in place. From the model of the universe that physicists are using in the quest for a Grand Unified Theory GUT to the model of human nature espoused by most social scientists and philosophers to the ideological models for the formation of social systems. It is a worldview that is grounded in science and draws on the works of established scholars in various fields.

To begin with, we consider the universe itself - how it evolved, how it manifests, designs and engineers itself. And then, by reverse engineering deduce what exists beyond this universe, beyond the “big bang”. The big bang isn’t something that happened billions of years ago. The universe is still in the throes of that powerful eruption as the ever-accelerating expansion of the universe attests to. The particles created in the early universe are exactly the same now as they were then. Time has not passed for them and since they are the foundation of everything that exists, including ourselves, we are not very far from the beginning.

Now, one of the fundamental characteristics of this universe is its peculiar habit of creating something out of what that something is not. Take the classical world and the quantum world. The classical world is the familiar sensual world of objects, sights and sounds that we inhabit, and the quantum world is the world of particles like quarks, electrons and atoms. The classical world is formed by quantum particles but it is something entirely different from the quantum world. As far as the quantum world is concerned the classical world doesn’t even exist. In the quantum world, for example, there is no such thing as solidity while in our world it is commonplace. The quantum world allows us to exist in a world that is experienced as something other than what the quantum world is. Or we might say that the quantum world makes up another world that is totally different from it. Scientists have yet to find a connection between the two worlds and use two entirely different mathematical approaches in dealing with them.

In SHADOWS OF THE MIND Roger Penrose expresses his consternation at this state of affairs. He writes, “Quantum theory provides a superb description of physical reality on a small scale, yet it contains many mysteries. Without doubt, it is hard to come to terms with the workings of this theory, and it is particularly difficult to make sense of the kind of ‘physical reality’ – or lack of it – that it seems to imply for our world. Taken at its face value, the theory seems to lead to a philosophical standpoint that many find deeply unsatisfying. At best, and taking its description at their most literal, it provides us with a very strange view of the world indeed. At worst, and taking literally the proclamations of some of its most famous protagonists, it provides us with no view of the world at all.” Mr. Penrose goes on to ponder the fact that there are no mathematical formulas to account for the inconsistencies that arise between the behavior of the objects in our world and those in the quantum world - that the objects in our world do not behave like the quantum particles of which they are constructed. For one example, particles are said to spin in many different directions and to occupy many locations at once but objects like golf balls do not. “The spin of a classical object like a golf ball,” Penrose writes, “has a well-defined axis about which the object actually spins, whereas it appears that a quantum-level object is allowed to spin all at once about all kinds of axes pointing in many different directions. If we try to think that a classical object is really just the same as a quantum object, except that it is ‘big’ in some sense, then we seem to be presented with a paradox. (for according to mathematical calculations) The larger the magnitude of the spin, the more directions there are to be involved. Why, indeed, do classical objects not spin in many different directions all at once? This is an example of an X-mystery (a paradox) of quantum theory. Something comes to intervene (at an unspecified level), and we find that most types of quantum state do not arise, (or, at least, almost never arise) at the classical level of phenomena that we can actually perceive… There is even a more clear-cut example of this sort of thing in the quantum-mechanical concept of location for a particle. We have seen that a particle’s state can involve superpositions of two or more different locations. (Recall the discussion of 5.7, in which a photon’s state is such that it can be located in two different beams simultaneously after it encounters a half-silvered mirror.) Such superpositions could apply also to any other kind of particle – simple or composite – like an electron, a proton, an atom, or a molecule. Moreover, there is nothing in the formalism of quantum theory that says that large objects such as golf balls cannot also find themselves in such confused states of location.”

In a subsequent book THE ROAD TO REALITY Penrose speculates that gravity might account for the difference between the two worlds. At the quantum level gravity’s effect is inconsequential but on large objects its force is much more influential. And it is the exertion of that force which might account for the more uniform behavior of classical world objects.

The goal to somehow merge the classical and the quantum worlds in a GUT whereby both worlds will be expressed by the same mathematics is the holy grail of physics. No one can know for sure, however, whether such a prospect is actually possible. There are a few theories that are in the process of being worked on, such as string theory, loop quantum gravity and twistor theory. The proponents of string theory have been touting it as having the GUT all but wrapped up. It’s just a matter of time they say before it will all come together.

Be that as it may, all the theories remain shrouded in a problematic fog where experimentation is not as yet, perhaps never will be, able to penetrate. There are extraordinary complexities to be dealt with. String theory, for example, posits extra dimensions at the tiniest scale of the universe. There are seven extra dimensions that are posited, making eleven altogether, and they are all curled up in a complex convoluted Calabi-Yau space of which there are an infinite variety that somehow need to be sorted through to find just the right one.

This all seems hopelessly complicated, especially when we look to science to reduce things to simpler elements. Strings are simple elements but they are all wound up in complex phenomena. Also string theory does not offer us a way of readily relating to the universe we are part of.

There is nothing that says there has to be one math for everything. And it seems clear that the two different maths are given to us and dictated by the nature of things. The classical world gives us one kind of math and the quantum world another. It remains to be seen whether or not there is one math for the entire universe - one equation that will unite everything. Physicists certainly want there to be. In a platonic universe, an ideal universe, perhaps that would be the case – one equation for it all. But what world will provide that equation? The world that led up to the big bang, perhaps?

Perhaps taking a different view of the universe might yield more satisfying results. I propose we take a telescopic view and get away from the minutia of particle behavior that so bedevils our minds. A broad view that everyone can follow and, if one has a mind to, actually relate to.

To begin with, the scientific model of the universe physicists are using, known as the standard model, consists of four fundamental forces - the strong force (gluons), the weak force, electromagnetism and gravity. However, moving way back and taking a telescopic look at the whole universe from the largest scale to the smallest there appears to be only two fundamental forces – namely, attraction and repulsion. Attraction and repulsion form a universal dynamic that seems to suggest a law whereby the one infers the other.

Gravity is, of course, attractive. And the forces of attraction and repulsion are quite evident in the quantum forces. The force of attraction would, of course, be accounted for by the strong force, the gluons, as they are called, that keep quarks held in confinement by overcoming the force of repulsion between them. And the weak force, responsible for radioactive decay, drives assembled atomic particles apart. The weak force, then, is a repulsive force. Electromagnetism serves as the catalyst in which all the quantum forces of attraction and repulsion are conducted. Particles draw on electromagnetism to produce either force in relation to the particular charges of the particles.

Since 1998 there is also the discovery of dark energy to contend with. This is the repulsive force responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. So, we see that the underlying universal forces are indeed those of attraction/repulsion A/R.

This brings a heretofore strange, alien universe into familiar territory with respect to the human condition. The forces of attraction and repulsion, which we all experience in regard to various things, are how we as a particular life form can come to see ourselves as intimately ensconced within the fabric of the universe itself.

Quantum particles are formed and instructed by the forces of attraction and repulsion that permeate their existence. A/R characterizes the whole universe with its repulsive dark energy and attractive gravity. Life itself is characterized by the attraction/repulsion dynamic. The expansion and contraction of our lungs is due to our organic attraction to oxygen molecules and repulsion to the waste products that are exhaled. Our brains, hearts and intestines are constantly expanding and contracting by some internal attractive/repulsive dynamic of their own. Proteins, the very building blocks of life, are characterized by A/R. Before they become proteins the chains of amino acids of which they are composed must fold. The folding of proteins is due to the attraction and repulsion of the amino acids with respect to the alignment of their specific charges and also to hydrophobia, the repulsion to water, expressed by the non-polar amino acids.

This dynamic is also manifested in the external behavior of organisms. Primitive one-celled creatures swimming in primordial tidal pools functioned by employing such a dynamic. They were attracted to food and repelled by toxins. Here we have the beginnings of conscious intelligence where informed choices are made. In the case of more evolved animals the interplay of attraction/repulsion becomes more complex. For instance, a female cheetah with cubs is faced with a dilemma. For days she has been staying close to her cubs to protect them from lurking predators. But her growing hunger is telling her its time to hunt for food before she becomes too weak. The thought of food is attractive. The thought of protecting her cubs is also attractive. The thought of leaving her cubs alone is repulsive. The thought of becoming weak with hunger is also repulsive. She is reluctant to leave her cubs but she knows she has to. Her cubs might be okay on their own for a while but without food neither they nor she could survive. And so, finally, the attraction to food wins out and off she goes to hunt. Further along the evolutionary track we have human beings who can reflect about what they are attracted to and repelled by and philosophize about it in grand style.

We see that the attraction/repulsion dynamic factors into every facet of existence from the beginning of the universe to the present. Everything is holding together and pushing apart, attracting/repelling. It seems that this dynamic is the primal mover behind all that exists. Spacetime itself is drawn out, as it were, between the attraction/repulsion dynamic. The expansive force of the universe, the force of repulsion, pushes away from the force of attraction making room, as it were, for all that follows. The attract/repel dynamic is ubiquitous throughout the universe. This dynamic duo is responsible for the revelation of all the various phenomena in accordance, perhaps, with a particular ratio of itself. Attraction/Repulsion is the binary language of your computer that has to do with electrons being attracted or repelled. A/R is the computer we know as the universe. The universe is at once the hardware and the software. It is an information processing system that produces and processes its own information through the binary of A/R.

Attraction/repulsion of energy itself is the élan vital that makes all things possible. It is difficult to think of any phenomenon where they are not present in tandem, from the holding together of an ever-expanding universe to the deciding factors in human relationships to the imbroglio of quarks and gluons. It is the duality of attraction and repulsion, a coming together and a pushing away that makes the universe at all possible. And the one thing that this duality is part of is something we call energy. All is one as the philosophers of old used to say. All is indeed one. Everything and everyone is of the one and the same energy. And with the creation of life, energy has found a way of experiencing itself.