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The writer is a geopolitical analyst. She also writes at globaltab.net and tweets @AneelaShahzad
So many phenomena, we experience in everyday life are such that they have no material existence. Gravity is one such phenomenon, which is a well-defined, mathematically formulated phenomenon, but which is a force not carried by any material or subatomic particle that we could call a ‘graviton’. Without having a corporeal actuality, it is just the effect or pull we encounter as an intangible field around the planet.
The field arranges matter in it, but is in itself matterless. It propagates just as equally in vacuum, which is space without matter. This challenges materialism and invites the metaphysical question: what is the “substance” of a field that is free of particles and exists independent of a medium? Electromagnetism (EM) is a similar phenomenon. EM waves create a field, the effects of which can be detected unchanged in vacuum and in the atmosphere. More so, the EM, studied under the lens of quantum electrodynamics, shows that EM waves also behave similar to photons of light-waves, which have both wave-like and particle-like characteristics. This leads to the same ontological ambiguity we ask of light-waves: are they particles, or photons? Or are they waves, or just probability distribution with no real matter on the other side of the equation?
Such questions force us out of the realm of physics, transcending us into metaphysics. They challenge the definitions of reality and identity.
When we are mathematically formulising phenomena such as EM, we are measuring the effects (field) produced by the moving electric charge in an electromagnet, on an EMF meter. And the fact that the nature of the ‘effect’ produced by this field is constant, reliable and numerically recordable is what makes it ‘scientific’. But when we dig deeper, we find that its own reality is unknowable. We are observing ‘real effects’ of unreal origins – just like a prisoner in solitary confinement who receives a meal slid into his compound every day will never know what or who slid the meal in, but he knows/believes it is someone/something real.
The mathematical description of EM waves, using Maxwell/ Helmholtz equations, is a measurement of the effects. The effects are physically real but the phenomenon that produced them and the mathematical constructs used for description are both abstract. The mathematical representation is abstract on two accounts. Firstly, it numericises phenomena without knowing to what extent the phenomenon would lend itself to numbery. Secondly, in doing so, the EM equations are set on several irreal assumptions, like assuming perfect vacuums (zero charge); infinite monochromatic waves that assume infinite time; and spatial and temporal independence. These are ideal constructs, never perfectly realised in the world, yet they are considered scientific because they yield highly accurate predictions for how the field will behave in certain circumstances. Taking into account the large number of assumptions, one can also say that the equations would be an approximate guess of reality at best, but a guess with a lot of predictive power and accuracy. And the success of the induction process – enabling us to jump from one reality to the other, from an unknown something to its effect on the EMF meter, and then to mathematical abstraction – can indeed be thought of as ‘miraculous’.
Interestingly so, these equations, like other mathematical constructs, have other solutions yielding new unverifiable phenomenon, which begs the question that sentences uttered in the language of mathematics have unique, reality-based meanings or they are idealisations that may yield any number of meanings, that may be corresponding to the real or the unreal.
Strangely, scientific realists, who believe that theories describe mind-independent reality and that theoretical entities (fields, charges) are real, put forth Hilary Putnam’s no-miracle argument which posits that if scientific theories did not truly describe the world, their success would be considered a miracle. This idea seems to lack logic, as it would mean that instead of trying to explain unobservable realities and abstract, idealised mathematics, scientific realists are just content with the fact that nature has given some threads of control in their hands, of things that may very well be as occult as ghosts and angels – as they dwell in realms of no-substance, no-medium, pure energy, as if coming from a genie’s wand. This defies them altogether from realism.
So, the core idea in question here is definitional. While reality lies all around us in the vast expanse of space, truth is something present only in our minds. In itself, it is a miracle of the mind to comprehend ideas such as EM, which are outside our material realm, and to have languages that express these realities in theories and mathematics. The miracle is to have tiny minds, confined in the tiny bio/atmosphere of the Earth that can detect and approximately describe and even harness things they can observe and things they cannot observe, things that belong to their planet and things that are universal.
So, the idea of electromagnetism and the existence of other such unobservable universals raises philosophical questions that shake the foundations of scientific realism and materialism. They also especially raise questions about mathematics such as: how does mathematics describe physical events with abstract symbols that have no real relation with the events; and how is the application of mathematics to the world possible? Why is mathematics essential to science and so clearly descriptive of science? Or how can mathematics explain reality?
Truth is as true as it can be; and reality, something multifaceted and multilayered like the complex universe, gives into human truth only so much. Yet human truth is a constantly expanding and evolving process; it tends to be exhaustive, but it is unable to be, rather reality keeps exhausting it. When it has pondered enough into the intricate details of a realm, reality quietly drags truth-seekers into other more intricate, more sublime realms, until it brings human experience to face a reality that is empty of matter, void of medium, and wherein immaterial strings of ‘being’ breathe in and out of existence, trillions of time in the split of a second, rendering reality to be an ethereal fabric that is constantly being woven and unwoven, only to give a specter of materialism.
Truth then is true guesswork of pure-hearted, earnest truth-seekers. At best it is a close approximation of reality. It can be ‘more accurate’ but it cannot be absolute, for the absolute keeps itself obscured under clouds of uncertainty principles that blur the picture. What can be observed then is statistical and probabilistic. We observe reality across clouds of vagueness, and out of this vagueness we create our ‘certain truths’.
Scientific ‘truths’ may be good for ‘all practical purposes’, but what is needed is that the scientific community should admit that these truths are extracted with chimeric conjuring of mathematical spells that express phantasmagoric versions of fathomless obscurities.
