Universe Without Things: Physics in an Intangible Reality

Description

Physics is written in the language of mathematics, and its findings are based on thousands of experiments. But what kind of picture does physics paint of the world? What do theories like relativity or quantum mechanics contribute to it? How complete is this picture? This book sheds light on how the "things" these theories are about relate to our everyday things, and points out what questions remain unanswered and what problems are involved. In this book, the author presents how physics works, what it can and cannot do. In doing so, he describes the surprising answers that physics provides to many of our questions about the nature of "things" and the world; answers that challenge our intuition in many ways. This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Universum ohne Dinge by Jan-Markus Schwindt, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors. Contents List of Figures 1: Introduction 2: Philosophy 2.1 Philosophy and Language 2.2 World and Mind: Schrödinger’s Dilemma 2.3 Devaluation of Philosophy 2.4 Wittgenstein vs. Jaspers 3: Mathematics 3.1 Sets and Structures 3.2 Proofs 3.3 Mathematics: Man-Made or Man-Independent? 3.4 Numbers and Spaces 3.5 Differential Calculus 4: Natural Science 4.1 Our Common World 5: Reductionism 5.1 Reduction by Decomposition 5.2 Reduction by Generalization or Unification 5.3 Reduction by Replacement 5.4 Reduction of Effective Theories 5.5 The Special Role of Physics 6: Physics 6.1 History and Overview 6.2 Physical Theories and Experiments The Approximate Nature of the Theories Physics and Metaphysics Beauty and Abstraction 6.3 Physics and Mathematics 7: The Pillars of Physics 7.1 Classical Mechanics Forces Energy Degrees of Freedom 7.2 Classical Field Theory Waves Force Fields 7.3 Special Theory of Relativity The Two Postulates of the SR Time Dilation Lorentz Transformation Mass and Energy 7.4 General Theory of Relativity The Curvature of Space-Time Einstein’s Field Equations Cosmological Solutions 7.5 Statistical Mechanics Entropy The Second Law and the Direction of Time 7.6 Quantum Mechanics Wave-Particle Duality Chance Measurement Problem and Uncertainty Principle State Space and Schrödinger’s Cat Entanglement Copenhagen Interpretation Many-Worlds Interpretation 7.7 Quantum Field Theory The Mathematical Problems of QFT QFT and GR 7.8 The Standard Model of Particle Physics The Particle Zoo Connection Between Standard Model and QFT 7.9 Cosmology The Universe Is Very Big The Universe Is Even Getting Bigger The Universe Is Even Getting Bigger Faster and Faster 8: The Unknown 8.1 The Hunt for the Theory of Everything 8.2 Open Questions Smolin’s List Further Open Questions 8.3 The Crisis of Physics Side Effects Books on the Crisis 8.4 The Multiverse 9: Things and Facts 9.1 Facts First Complication Second Complication Third Complication Fourth Complication The Work of the Physicist 9.2 Things 9.3 World and Reality 9.4 Time 10: The Practical Limits of Physics 10.1 Once Again: Scales 11: The Fundamental Limits of Physics 11.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness 11.2 The Flow of Time 11.3 Qualia and Physicalism Elimination Functionalism 12: Conclusion 12.1 Physics and Reality 12.2 The Richness of Physics 12.3 Practical Limits and Crisis of Physics Literature Index