In 2012 the world experiences horrific environmental and social collapse due to human overpopulation, the destruction of nature and the pollution of the natural ecosystems. Most humans have died (from massive storms, UV radiation due to collapse of Ozone layer, starvation, disease, and finally from the brutality of humans fighting to survive). The south west of Australia is one of the few places in the world that missed the worst of the damage.
Eight years later (2020) and Nature is healing, small communities are forming and the internet is coming back online - but only from one main server that survived the collapse (a military network that was underground with backup power).
A young woman uploads the work of a philosopher she had read prior to the collapse, only to find it deleted. She then receives death threats and uncovers a plot to kill the philosopher. The woman sails down the coast of Australia to warn him. However, her computer has had a radio beacon attached and she is followed by the 'evil ones' who wish to suppress the truth (control the world's knowledge by controlling the internet and killing those who threaten their knowledge / power).
She finds the philosopher (who has given up on the world). They fall in love and she restores his belief in humanity. She then films a short documentary / interview on his work on physical reality.
A series of suspenseful scenes follow as the evil people arrive on the island and attack them. Eventually the philosopher is killed, the woman is saved from a bullet by a philosophy book in her pocket (that he gave her - the gift of truth excels all other gifts, as Buddha wrote!).
She captures and interrogates the last 'bad man' and gets the password to the only functioning server of the Internet. She uploads the philosopher's work, deletes the religious / fundamentalist propaganda, and changes the password. The internet is now guided by the truth of physical reality (WSM) and knowledge is freely accessible....
.. My purpose therefore is, to try if I can discover what those principles are, which have introduced all that doubtfulness and uncertainty, those absurdities and contradictions into the several sects of philosophy; insomuch that the wisest men have thought our ignorance incurable, conceiving it to arise from the natural dullness and limitation of our faculties. (George Berkeley)
Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? ... Oddly, things have now reached such a state that even among men of intelligence philosophy means something fantastical and vain, without value or usefulness, both in opinion and practice. (Michel de Montaigne)
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little,
not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
(Charles Darwin, Introduction to The Descent of Man, 1871)
Quantum Physics: Quantum Theory / Wave Mechanics
These Quantum Physics pages (on either side) show how this new understanding of physical reality (that all light and matter interactions are wave interactions in Space) explains and solves the central problems of Quantum Theory.
The mistake was to work from Newton's foundation of particles and instantly acting gravity forces in space and time (many things) and then have to add more things to explain light and electricity, i.e. charged particles, continuous electromagnetic fields and waves (Faraday, Maxwell, Lorentz, Einstein's Special Relativity).
Thus by 1900 the central concepts of Physics were;
Matter as discrete particles with both gravitational mass and electrical charge properties (mass-charge duality).
Light as continuous electromagnetic waves (velocity of light c).
Continuous electromagnetic fields created by discrete charged particles (discrete particle-continuous field duality).
Local charge interactions limited by the velocity of electromagnetic waves (velocity of light c).
Over the next 30 years Quantum Theory destroyed these foundations by showing the exact opposite, that;
Matter has wave properties thus a particle-wave duality (de Broglie Waves, Schrodinger's wave equations).
Light has discrete particle properties thus a particle-wave duality (Light 'quanta', Max Planck, Albert Einstein)
Continuous deterministic fields are replaced by discrete statistical fields e.g. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation, Born's probability waves to predict the location of the particle.
Non-Local matter interactions (instant action-at-distance EPR Bell Aspect)
The solution to this confusion and contradiction is simple once known. Describe reality from One thing existing, Space (that we all commonly experience) and its Properties. i.e. Rather than adding matter particles to space as Newton did, we consider Space with properties of a continuous wave medium for a pu...
What is Metaphysics / What is the Problem?
We may agree, to understand by Metaphysics an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance, or the study of first principles or ultimate truths, or again the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole. (Bradley) (Bradley, 1846-1924)
Drop a ball. Notice that you do not see any obvious connection between the ball and the earth - yet they are obviously connected because we see the effect of this connection, the ball moves (accelerates) towards the earth. The same argument applies to the Earth orbiting the sun, an electron in an atom, how we can see stars across the universe.
We give these connections names, e.g. light and gravity, but no one knew what these hidden causal connections were.
So you see the problem of metaphysics is simple and profound - to solve it requires true knowledge of physical reality, such that we could understand this hidden causal connection that our senses tell us must exist, yet we do not see?
This is known to philosophers as Hume's Problem of Causation and Necessary Connection, but really it is common knowledge that dates back to the ancients - the Problem of the One and the Many.
... experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable. (Hume, 1737)It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles on which the influence of those objects entirely depends. (Hume, 1737)
When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible co...
Site Introduction (May 2008): Despite several thousand years of failure to correctly understand physical reality (hence the current postmodern view that this is impossible) it is actually very simple to work out how matter exists and moves about in Space. We just had to take Science (Occam's Razor / Simplicity) and Metaphysics (Dynamic Unity of Reality) seriously and thus describe reality from only one substance existing, as Leibniz wrote; 'Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another'.When we deduce this most Simple Science Theory of Reality we find that there is only one possible solution: Space must be the substance which exists and matter is formed from waves in Space. i.e. While there are many minds and material things, they all exist in one common Space (just look around you and think about it). We can then show that the Wave Structure of Matter is the correct solution as it deduces the fundamentals of Physics & Philosophy perfectly (there are no opinions). I realise that there are a lot of 'crackpot' theories about truth and reality on the internet, but this solution is the most simple one and it is obvious once known (though it takes time for our minds to adjust to new knowledge).In hindsight the error was obvious - to try and describe an interconnected reality from the foundation of many discrete and separate things, matter 'particles', which then required forces / fields to connect them in space and time. This was always just a mathematical solution which never explained how matter was connected across the universe. For those who are religious / spiritual, I think Albert Einstein expresses the enlightened view of God. He writes 'I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.' It is now obvious that discrete and separate 'particles' do not exist - that this harmony aris...
on Philosophy