How small can you go?
Scientists have defined a "point particle" as a dimensionless element of physical reality. Admittedly this perception is attached to the concept that mathematical theories simply have no relevance at scales less than these so called "point particles". As Atoms, so called indivisible elements by the Greeks, have been later discovered to be composed of still more elemental quarks, is it possible to move down to scales of smallness beyond quarks or is a dimensionless particle as small as it gets?
Comments (41)
I do not believe any scientist has proposed the physical existence of such a thing. For one thing, in physics we know that our theories break down at the Planck scale. There might be something "down there" or there might not be; but we have no mathematical tools with which to approach the question.
Newton proved that we can replace a mass with a point mass for purposes of calculation; but that's not the same as anyone thinking there are dimensionless points in reality.
I saw a very interesting video the other day. The Secret Life of Quarks. You know how we're told that protons and neutrons each have three quarks inside them? It's not that simple. The number three comes out of integrating the "quark density function" to show that the difference of the number of quarks minus the number of antiquarks is three. But there might be millions, billions, trillions of quarks. I'm not actually sure how all this works, but I did understand that it's not like three as in one, two, three. You get a different number of total quarks depending on the scale at which you look. It's very mysterious. And this is the limit of theory. Nobody has any idea what's smaller.
I'd be very surprised if reality contains dimensionless mathematical points.
Check this out if you're interested in particle physics, it's quite watchable but a lot deeper than some of the handwavy popularized stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_PmmMkGyx0
This is from Wikipedia:
In physics, the Planck length, denoted ?P, is a unit of length. It is equal to 1.616255×10?35 m... The Planck length is the scale at which quantum gravitational effects are believed to begin to become apparent in what is called the Quantum foam, and where the interactions require a working theory of quantum gravity to be analyzed. The Planck length may also represent the diameter of the smallest possible black hole.
I have read, I don't remember where, that the Planck length is considered the smallest possible length.
Quoting Proximate1
Planck units – fundamental relationships – seem to correspond more to what ancient Greeks (& Indian C?rv?ka) had in mind than to what early modern chemists, then physicists, anachronistically (mis)labeled "atoms". The only thing that was "discovered" with regard to "atoms" was that John Dalton et al were wildly premature and mistaken.
Beyond the excellent point you make about these points, I'll invoke the issue of intelligibility. What exactly do we have in mind? I understand representing something like a pure location with a vector, but it's still somewhat vague.
I was always and even now am quite disappointed about how the Greeks "got it wrong" because atoms are divisible into quarks as per current-best science. However, the Greeks would've been in error only if the atoms they were talking about are the particles science defines as atoms. The possibility remains that the Greek "atom" could actually be quarks and if these can be broken down into simpler particles, these. In short, the Greeks were right on the money about matter being atomic/particulate in nature.
Secondly, on the matter of continuous decomposition of particles whether quarks or something else, there are two ways things can turn out:
1. Particle physics will hit a wall i.e. we'll discover a particle that can't further be decomposed into smaller particles
or
2. Particles can be continually divided into smaller and smaller sub-particles but there'll come a point beyond which it'll stop making sense. A similar situation arises in the social sciences - we can divide society into communities, communities into families, families into individuals but then dividing further would mean going down into the level of organs, tissues, cells, molecules, atoms, quarks and social sciences at these levels is meaningless. Perhaps, if one is open-minded enough, the end of particle physics could be the beginning of______________(???)
Not sure what you mean. Mathematical points on a line are represented as real numbers; mathematical points in n-space are represented as ordered n-tuples of real numbers. There are other kinds of spaces with other notions of points. For example in function spaces, functions themselves are the points.
None of which has anything to do with physics. Physics uses math to express and model their theories of nature, but the theories are not literally nature itself. Nature is beyond math IMO.
Because reality at it's smallest is qualitative, not quantitative.
That's kind of what I'm getting at. The perfect point doesn't make physical/intuitive sense. We know how to handle vectors, of course. I'm very much with you on the gap between models and reality. Maybe there's no direct access to 'Reality' at all, but that would take us into the metaphysical quagmire (another person could argue that 'reality' is just some token used in thousands of different ways, etc.)
Correcto. Our access to reality is conditioned by our material nature. Making it limited, ultimately. But since people don't want to hear that, I guess we can just keep saying a Theory of Everything is right around the corner. Trust us. :wink:
Yeah that's pretty much my view. There are some good points against this view (primarily directed against the intelligibility of concepts like reality-in-itself) but it still seems roughly right to me (or one of the least misleading or errant ways of talking/thinking.)
Well, that isn't my view. My view is the idea that one can have access to reality is a genuine idea. It's the method that is flawed. Materiality is not the end-all-be-all of reality. Consciousness is. Namely, the Absolute Infinite Unoriginate Primeval Consciousness, what's called God.
But we need to use the proper methodology. In the same way we use logical means to prove logical things. Empirical means to prove empirical things. We need to use conscious means to prove conscious things.
Hence, through the yoga system in the Vedic philosophy, we do the experiment, we purify our consciousness, we self-realize our own true consciousness and from that point, we realize the Divine Consciousness. That's how we know reality per se.
In my system.
I have some exposure to that way of thinking through Husserl. I used to argue myself that 'consciousness' is another name of Being. I've also liked texts like 'Does Consciousness Exist?" by William James. http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/ps000113.pdf
In the end, though, I found myself in the Groundless Grounds camp. Personally I think the mind-matter-etc. is a dead end and that metaphysics builds castles in the sand. IMO, we can't play chess with language. Instead we have a poetry of high stakes, ultimately driven by spiritual-political concerns.
This is why I am not arguing metaphysics. It's not a logical, conceptual point. It's an experiential one. You can verify for yourself if God exists or not, you do the experiment, see for yourself. No metaphysics needed.
Yes, Postmodern linguistic philosophy is not philosophy. It's what Socrates and Plato rightly derided as philodoxy. Lover of opinion. Philosophy is about the truth, about wisdom, about reality. Not about language games. If philosophy is about language games, then it's a waste of time. We can do something more productive with our time.
I do like the epistemological issues we are touching on. Improvising, I'd say that Derrida's critique of the self's direct access to the self is pretty effective (not just his, but he aims very carefully at the foundation of metaphysics.) As I mean the word, the notion of self-verification is profoundly metaphysical. Some is right there, infinitely close, that we can look at. Call is 'mind' or 'consciousness' or whatever. It's usually also conceived as radically private, privacy itself. The problem with this view is that the study of language reveals the implausibility of its being a private possession. The private self is something like an extremely useful 'fiction.' 'Fiction' is not the perfect word. I don't think there is a perfect word or a clean arrival (I'll always improvise as I sketch my cloudy anti-position.) Instead one just loosens up and accepts the fuzziness of language and perhaps the impossibility of a System.
If you're saying what I think you're saying, then it's based on a misconception. I am not saying "I am God" the self is not what I refer to as God.
"The Self" so-called is merely the Divine Spark. God is the Absolute, the all-Pervading Infinite Consciousness. So, private self-verification, is not what I am speaking of.
Though, self-realization is necessary, it's not the end. Knowing the Absolute is the end.
And if we want to play the skepticism game, then we're not actually doing philosophy. This is philodoxy, love of perspective, of theory, of opinion, of belief, rather than love of truth, love of wisdom. Technically, there is no access to anything whatsoever. If we want to play the nihilism game, then we're not playing the philosophy game.
To each their own, but I find some thinkers labelled pomo to be intensely sincere in the pursuit of truth. I don't trust pejorative labels. I've had love-hate relationships with controversial philosophers and in the end I'd see what was good and what was bad in them. They are never as good as their worshipers think and never as bad as their critics would like them to be. Something like that.
FWIW, I have insulted philosophers without having really looked into them myself, and I always ended up regretting it when I finally read them. Even if I didn't find them convincing, I also discovered that they weren't what I projected on them.
So, I've read all of these rascal philosophers. I've done a degree in philosophy, I've read all of the books on the library shelf when I was in College, even now, though I know what they say, I still listen to them. I listened to Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty just recently.
I don't deny their sincerity in pursuit of truth, but their belief system is the blind leading the blind. If truth is not real, then their position is untrue by their own admission let alone mine. Hence, I don't consider it worth serious philosophical consideration.
Philosophy is about Absolute Truth, Absolute Reality, and the nature of the Good. If you are denying the very possibility of those things, I consider that anti-philosophy. Not philosophy.
I think that you have written a really a clear response. The limitations of our ability to understand is more the barrier than what may be the actuality of it all.
"A point particle (ideal particle or point-like particle, often spelled pointlike particle) is an idealization of particles heavily used in physics. Its defining feature is that it lacks spatial extension; being dimensionless, it does not take up space." - Wiki
It looks like there is question about the simple limitations of space itself.
I hear you, and I agree that motive is important. There can be lazy skeptics and lazy nihilists, absolutely. But earnest people can arrive at positions that others find offensive.
I do agree with you that there's a narrow type of philosophy that we might call Philosophy which does want to justify reality (theodicy) and build a system. To this kind of Philosopher, the skeptic and the nihilist are cheating. They aren't philosophers at all. But lots of contemporary philosophy is then anti-philosophical, 'anti-Platonist,' etc. I'm more in that camp. I value novels as much as treatises. For me philosophy is something like talking about existence in general courageously and rationally.
Nice! I've read most of Rorty, and I learned from him. I don't totally embrace him, but the man could write.
Quoting Dharmi
There's a sense in which I agree with you, but it's a delicate issue. Language is tricky. Irony is complex. People often don't or even can't say exactly what they mean directly. Sometimes a joke tells the truth. Sometimes a paradox tells the truth.
A hyper-rigorous thinker might itch like crazy for the Absolute, and it's that itch that lights up the obstacles in the way. For me the big issue turns out to be language, though that's not the perfect word. There isn't a perfect word, or that's what I roughly believe. What we want to say can't be said, that's what I almost want to say, but it's not quite right. Language is a public system, and it's more outside than inside. It's as much material as mental. It makes such questionable distinctions possible. Undecidable, but not decidedly undecidable.
Yes, I recognize that. And by your own admission, there is no truth. Which means, again, by your own admission your position is not true.
I appreciate the perspective that the Postmodern philosophers, Nietzsche, Stirner, Rorty, Derrida, Foucault, Davidson, Putnam, Kuhn, Wittgenstein etc. etc. bring to the table. It's very consistent with nominalist presuppositions. I admire consistency. But I don't consider it philosophy.
I consider Premodern philosophy and Modern philosophy as philosophy.
Premodern is the higher, Modern is the lower. Since Premodernism alone attempts to get at Universals and Absolutes. Modernism admits it cannot and occupies itself with the particulars of experience via pragmatic scientism.
I know about Ironism, I think I own Rorty's "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity" that, or another work of his. I own one of his books.
Nevertheless, just because people who are professionals and experts in obscurantism, State and corporate propaganda and sophistry say something, this doesn't mean they are right, especially when they are debunked by their own presuppositions on this issue of truth, and it doesn't mean that they're worthy of consideration.
Ha, I brush my teeth with quantum foam.
"In physics, the Planck length, denoted ?P, is a unit of length. It is equal to 1.616255×10?35 m... The Planck length is the scale at which quantum gravitational effects are believed to begin to become apparent in what is called the Quantum foam, and where the interactions require a working theory of quantum gravity to be analyzed. The Planck length may also represent the diameter of the smallest possible black hole.'
So gravitation may be a feature at scale but is it a limit? My guess is that the concept of a point particle is more or less shorthand for 'we have no way to make sense past this barrier'... yet. This is a horizon of oblivion where philosophy usurps science.
Language is socially constructed by humans. I think Daniel Everett in his book "Language: The Cultural Tool" has proved as much. I am not taken by language. I'm taken by the nature of the truth, if there is such a thing. If not, who cares there's no reason to waste my time here then. Philosophy is about truth, if there's no truth, then go home and play soccer or watch Friends.
Not quite! From my POV you are lurching into Chess again (math with words.) It's fuzzier than that. The meanings of words aren't fixed. Everything is context. I can't talk about Truth-in-general without irony. I believe in facts in the everyday sense. Instead of saying that all metaphysical propositions are FALSE, I'm saying something more like all metaphysical propositions are fuzzy. As we wander away from practical conversations, things get cloudier and cloudier. I don't think we can play checkers with these clouds. It's about the medium, you might say.
Oh no, I understand everything your position says very well. Words have no concrete meaning, yes. Which means everything you say has no concrete meaning. That's the point. So, I guess you're just killing time?
So far, whenever we get to the absolute end of the line on something, it has turned out that there's still more to find.
'Planck units – fundamental relationships – seem to correspond more to what ancient Greeks (& Indian C?rv?ka) had in mind than to what early modern chemists, then physicists, anachronistically (mis)labeled "atoms". The only thing that was "discovered" with regard to "atoms" was that John Dalton et al were wildly premature and mistaken.'
Well maybe it was a case of 18th century science doing what it could to meet the definition and falling short. In this case quarks would be atoms in the Greek sense but we may be just waiting for a capacity to scale this down too. Everything rarifies to energy at some level, then it is a matter of how it is packaged at decreasing quantum levels. The story of smallness may be more one of space itself as its properties to accommodate corporeal substance are funneled downward to exotic places.
'So far, whenever we get to the absolute end of the line on something, it has turned out that there's still more to find.'
You must be an astrophysicist. A few hundred years ago people were throwing around the wild concept that stars might be many millions of miles away. I guess they were off by few exponential units but it beat the pinholes in the shroud of heaven theory. We tend to reach these barriers of technology then maddeningly assume these are somehow limits of reality.
"However, the Greeks would've been in error only if the atoms they were talking about are the particles science defines as atoms. The possibility remains that the Greek "atom" could actually be quarks and if these can be broken down into simpler particles..."
Yeah, that's how I see it too.
It is really the idea of reaching a point where corporeal substance can no longer be divisible. The question is does indivisibility exist? We stand at this juncture where our scale of existence can be probed in both the direction of smallness or largeness but after a certain point it becomes irrelevant to our reality to move past these in a tangible way. The interaction of particles by high energy collision is our main way to trace our theories of elementary particles, while factors of time and the speed of light seem to inhibit us at the large scale. Your social science allegory is interesting because it does appear that slicing and dicing beyond practicality starts to change the meaning when scales become remote to our existence.
It may be pointless for me to keep trying but: earnest summaries like 'there is no truth' are basically worthless to me. 'Words have no concrete meaning' is also, by itself, stupid. All one sentence pronouncements are stupid, including this one.
I can't upload what I think I've vaguely realized in some cheap oneliner. I've explicitly said: it ain't math! That means there is no condensed theorem to present, followed by a proof. That whole approach is fucked, IMO, though it feels so natural if one begins in a certain place, with a certain fantasy about some perfect science of the immediate soul which generates unambiguous truths.
Glittering crystals !
They must be out there somewhere....yet no one understands my supposedly transparent language. No one gets my method. Those who doubt are just being impish or corrupt. Let's just ignore the possibility that the mission sometimes changes with updated facts on the ground...
I know, you're a nihilist. Everything is worthless to you. I understand that perfectly.
'Nihilist' is another one of those words. I don't have high hopes for you understanding me, but it's the shallowness of all these cartoon words that I'm objecting to. Your attitude seems to be: if you don't see Philosophy asI see philosophy, you're nihilist, obscurantist, atheist, materialist, cultural-marxism guy.
I'm an irreligious guy who likes Bernie Sanders, wants health care for all, a high minimum wage, blah blah blah. I think metaphysics is hopeless but harmless, that labels without additional context are useless. I don't think that philosophy is proving things, so I won't try to prove that philosophy is not about proving things. As my vision/attitude of/toward language changed, so did the mission. Facts on the rough ground demanded an adjustment of strategy.Blah blah. Words for birds of a feather, mostly wasted, which is fine.
I have wondered about this relationship before, and how if (the big "if" in question in this thread) elementary particles actually are infinitesimal points, they would necessarily be black holes (the density of any point with nonzero mass is infinite, and so well above the threshold to form a black hole), and the smallest possible one would have a Schwarzchild radius of the Planck length. Since we don't even know if normal stellar-mass black holes contain actual singularities and suspect that they do not, it's probably not even necessary that fundamental particles be actual literal point particles, for us to consider them effectively tiny black holes.
Yeah, I know you're a Derridean and a Wittgensteinian you're just going to talk about the imprecision of words and how knowledge is impossible. And I frankly don't respect that view. You can have that view, you're free to do it, but I don't respect it. I consider that sophistry, pseudo-philosophy, philodoxy, nihilism anything except true philosophy.
Quoting norm
I definitely understand your position, I believed it myself once. Richard Rorty, probably the greatest Postmodern philosopher of recent times, held the same position. I just don't, and I think that's just giving up.
I think you've given up on serious questions and serious issues, and now you're stuck with pragmatic, practical things. I think that's giving up, surrender. A cop-out. You might find that fine to believe and accept, I do not. Apart from it being self-refuting at a fundamental level, it's also a cop-out.
It is always possible to muse about things that are outside of our ability to verify and we are free to do so, but with the caveat that it is just narrative without substance.
I think that we have not yet reached the smallest elements but simply have no way to detect these.
Undoubtedly our capacity to verify objects is limited by our instruments- basically CERN's collider and some pretty complicated physics theory. This realm of minute detection is not static and in the future both the theories and instruments will evolve- we may go smaller yet.
Actually an electron does more or less count as a quark based on it's mass and inability to be split into any constituent pieces I believe.
Make that zero dimensional.