Universal Physics

July 17th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Brown, D. E., Dawkins, Richard, Embodiment, Evolution, History, Mathematics, Metaphor, Physics, Universals |

The development of the science of physics, particularly over the last 400 years, can be seen as the triumph of a particular approach to knowledge gathering. This approach disregards the position of the human being within the scientific process, and attempts to construct an objective position outside of incarnate humanity from which to regard the world. In order to achieve objectivity it is necessary to consciously abandon our embodiment as ‘medium sized objects moving at medium speed’ (Dawkins 2003), and embrace an organised scepticism toward the data of the senses and the common sense which these senses produce. This in turn has required an increasing reliance on the (apparently) disembodied language of mathematics . Alongside this evacuation of the human being from its privileged position at the heart of physics is the corresponding development of a set of protocols for the objective verification and falsification of knowledge, enshrined in the idealisations of the scientific method. This project, the construction of Rational Physics through mathematisation and scientification, has been astonishingly successful, and its creations and discoveries are truly awe inspiring. However, the creation of new conscious knowledge does not necessarily mean the erasure of the old, and even though the findings of physics are as close to factual as we are likely to get, they still may not get us ‘where we live’. Science may have abandoned the body at some point in the late 16th Century, but as functioning humans we still take it around with us everywhere we go. Also, whilst our consciousness may be able to engage with the mathematical abstractions of quantum theory and dark energy, our non-conscious cognition (and actually much of our conscious, in the form of covert metaphors) is still working with the tools provided by an embodied evolution.

Within the system of beliefs, biases, misconceptions, common sense, and generalisations that Brown (1991) identified as ‘Human Universals’ there are a subset which refer specifically to matter, energy, and their interactions. In any formal, rational system of knowledge constructed through the protocols of science, this subset of knowledge would be called ‘physics’. In the context of human universals, which operates without scientific protocols but only with the innate and accumulated knowledge that comes with embodiment, this subset could be referred to as ‘Universal Physics”, a set of general principles and theories about the way the world works that is held by all cultures, and that is a result of a common biology and a common evolutionary history. While Rational Physics is the physics of the disembodied universe of atoms, quarks, membranes, black holes, and quanta. Universal Physics (UP) is the physics of dreams, intuition, emotion, art, God, and human frailty.

(Note: The “Universal Physics” referred to here is in no way connected to that proposed by Ethan Skyler http://www.physicsnews1.com/ or of the ‘commonsense science’ of Barnes, Bergman, Collins and Lucas http://www.commonsensescience.org/ )

Brown, D. E. (1991). Human Universals. New York, McGraw-Hill.
Dawkins, R. and L. Menon (2003). A devil’s chaplain: selected essays. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.