What Is Fundamental?

As a physicist, it is easy to be impressed with the understanding that fundamental physics has gifted us. Through the ingenuity and hard work of thousands of physicists, we have learned that all matter and energy in the universe is composed of interacting quantum fields, and we can in principle predict their behavior to great accuracy using the standard model of particle physics.

M. Leifer (B)

Chapman University, Orange, USA

e-mail: leifer@chapman.edu

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A. Aguirre et al. (eds.), What is Fundamental?, The Frontiers Collection, https://doi.org/10.1007/978- 3- 030-11301- 8_3 order to describe all matter. In principle, we could use fundamental physics to predict with the greatest possible accuracy what will happen in any given situation, including those relevant to chemistry and biology, and even in those sciences that deal with the human mind, such as neuroscience, psychology, and sociology. I say “in principle” because those calculations would involve an impossibly detailed description of the initial conditions of the system being studied, as well as infeasible computational power. It would be essentially impossible to identify and model a biological system directly in terms of its constituent quantum fields.

The view outlined above, that everything boils down to physics, is called physi- calism. Although it is an attractive view for a physicist—I, personally, was drawn to physics because it seemed to be the only way to truly understand the fundamental nature of reality—I shall be arguing for precisely the opposite view in this essay. My position is deeply influenced by the “Science Wars”; a battle that raged in the 1990s between scientists, philosophers, and sociologists over whether science can lay claim to objective truth. In many ways, I am a casualty of the science wars, since they were at their peak during my undergraduate education. Being young enough not to have developed strong opinions about the meaning of science, I have been influ­enced by the sociology camp to a greater extent than most scientists. The extreme version of the sociology side of the argument, which I call sociologism, claims not only that science is not objectively true, but that sociology is more fundamental than physics. It is quite understandable that a sociologist might find this view as appealing as physicalism is to a physicist, and a bit surprising that we do not have even more “isms” where scholars seek to put their own discipline at the top of the tree.

Although I want to incorporate some of the sociological insights into my argu­ment, of course I view sociologism as just as barmy as physicalism. However, the fact that scholars can seriously argue that a discipline other than physics should be considered fundamental lends some support to my thesis that “fundamental” is a mis­taken category. If this is so, then we shall need a theory of knowledge that accounts for the fact that subjects like physics can seem more “fundamental” than others when this is not actually so. I shall attempt to develop such a theory as well.

This essay is a sequel to my 2015 FQXi essay “Mathematics is Physics” [1], in which I proposed a theory of knowledge intended to explain why it is not surprising that advanced mathematics is so useful in physics. The theory of knowledge employed here is the exact same one, but I want to relate it more explicitly to my thoughts on the science wars.

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