Wonder and Wonder: On Philosophical 'Laws of Conservation' – Another Look at the Relationship Between Science and Philosophy

With God’s help

Bar Ilan website – 2011

Michael Abraham

 

introduction

Rosh Hashanah is considered "the day that gave birth to the world," that is, the day on which the world was created. Therefore, in honor of the upcoming Rosh Hashanah, we will try to look at the creation of the world from a different angle, and ask again what the relationship is between the scientific description and reality, and between these two and the biblical-traditional approach. I do not intend to address the details of the biblical description, but only the fundamental concept that emerges from it, according to which the world has a Creator.

There is a simple possibility to understand that the scientific description is nothing more than a description of the Creator's mode of operation, and thus to eliminate the contradiction in its entirety. However, here I intend to do more than that. I would like to emphasize here a consideration that a priori requires the existence of a Creator behind these events, and in the process point out angles that are 'transparent' from the scientific perspective. No less than this is an argument in favor of the existence of a Creator, there is a point here to a limit of science that is not self-evident.

Bones and Shape: Creation from Nothing[1]

We will illustrate this using an ancient-new scientific theory: the formation of opposites from hyolic matter. As a background, we will note that creation from nothing contradicts the basic conservation laws of physics, as well as intuition. And here, Anaximander, who was a Greek physicist and philosopher, a student of Thales of Miletus, proposed a solution to the problem, and this is how he wrote in the only original passage we have of his thought:

The unlimited is the beginning and foundation of all that exists. It is neither water nor any other of the things called elements, for it has a different and unlimited quality, and from it came the heavens and all the worlds in them. From where the being of all that exists comes, there also goes the reincarnation, according to necessity. For these give each other ransom and reparations for their wrongs according to the order of time.[2]

To contemporary ears, these things sound like ancient cosmogony that has already lost its appeal, but at second glance, one can see here the apparent advance of modern scientific principles. Anaximander makes two claims here: 1. The world was created through the process of creating various opposites: cold and heat, light and darkness, and so on. 2. These opposites were preceded by a (unlimited) hyolic matter that does not have the characteristics of the matter we are familiar with. It is the splitting of the hyolic matter that created these opposites, which offset each other ("giving each other ransom and compensation," in his words).

The first claim seems like an ingenious solution to the problem of creation out of nothing, and especially to the question of its relation to the laws of conservation. If we assume that every particle of matter that is created is accompanied simultaneously by its antiparticle with exactly opposite properties (charges), then the total of all charges in the world does not change in this creation. For example, if the particle that was created was an electron, which has a mass M and an electric charge Q, an antielectron will be created with it, whose mass is M-, and whose electric charge is Q-. Now, although there are two new particles in the world, the total mass and total charge in the world have not changed, and therefore no physical conservation law has been violated.

A similar picture also emerges in modern physics (quantum field theory), which describes the creation of such pairs from the vacuum, in accordance with the laws of conservation. Although the creation of the world itself is described differently. The Big Bang theory does not deal with the formation of matter but with its evolution from a singular point of matter, about which it is very difficult for science to say anything. We will return to this point later.

Is there a law of conservation of entity?

Physics, of course, does not deal with Joule matter (which has no properties), and from its perspective, the formation of particle pairs occurs from the void ("the vacuum state," in quantum theory terms). This is a part of Anaximander's theory that is not found in modern field theory. Here the question arises: Why did Anaximander really need it? What is the role of this hypothesis regarding Joule matter that preceded creation? What does it come to achieve? And if it does indeed have a role, then why don't we find it in modern physics?

To understand this, let's start by asking another question: Something in the physical process of particle pair formation seems problematic. Finally, two new entities have been created here, and they were created from absolute nothingness. Previously, the world was empty, and now it is populated with something. Although there is no law in physics that prohibits this, (since all charges are conserved, including mass, which is offset by negative mass), there is still something disturbing here, at least from a philosophical point of view. This can be defined as a violation of another "conservation law," which we will paraphrase here as "the law of conservation of entity." This law does not deal with the characteristics (charges) of matter, but with its very existence, or its essence. In this respect, something has indeed been broken (or: not preserved) here, since before there was nothing here and now there is something here.

This improbability consideration is "transparent" from the point of view of physics. It does not notice it, since it deals with characteristics (properties, charges), and not with the things themselves. However, Anaximander, being a philosopher, tried to answer this problem as well, and to that end he proposed something more complex than the proposal of modern physics. As we have seen, he states in his words another principle, according to which there has always been in the world a heliocentric element, devoid of properties (since all properties emerged from it). It was not physical matter in the sense familiar to us, since matter in its present form emerged from it. That matter was devoid of mass, devoid of electric charge, and devoid of any other physical property. This is the meaning of its heliocentricity (formlessness). The only thing that can be said about heliocentric matter is that it is new.

Philosophically, the Anaximanderian theory is more complete than the modern physical description, since the creation of opposites from the hyolic matter preserves the sum of all the properties (charges) in the world, and now the "law of conservation of being" is also preserved. In fact, from the point of view of his theory, there was something here before, and from this point of view the "law of conservation of being" is also not broken.

It seems that only the two assumptions together offer a real solution to the problem of creation from nothing. In fact, in light of this philosophical consideration, it becomes clear to us that the void that field theory speaks of is not really void. It is the Yulian state of matter, which exists but lacks any physical properties. Therefore, it is also transparent to instrumentation and even to physical thought. This picture presented by Anaximander solves both the physical problem (violation of the laws of conservation) and the philosophical problem (the law of conservation of entity).

The transparency of this question to physics

Once we understood the role of the assumption about the Joule matter, and came to the conclusion that it is a very reasonable and very fundamental principle that we called the 'law of conservation of entity', the second question we asked arises: Why does modern physics ignore the second problem, and present a picture in which the pair of particles emerges from the vacuum, without the Joule matter?

Physics does not seem to be troubled by the philosophical problem, but only by the physical problems. It is true that one could ask why the second problem, regarding the essence of being, is philosophical while the laws that concern the properties of matter (its charges) are scientific? The answer is that the plane of things in themselves (the noumenon, in Kantian terminology) does not exist in scientific glasses, and therefore the problems it raises are not addressed with scientific tools.[3] Physics deals with the physical properties of things, that is, their "form" (in the Aristotelian sense of this term, or the phenomenon in the corresponding Kantian terminology), and not with things per se.

Another wording for the new conservation law: conservation of ideas

From another angle, although very similar, we can say that in Anaximander's model, which sees the formation of the world as the formation of pairs of particles with opposite charges, another "law of conservation" was broken. If nothing existed before, when a pair of particles with positive and negative charge and mass, respectively, were first created, the concepts, or ideas, "charge" and "mass," were created here, which did not exist at all before. These ideas were created out of nothing. Although amount The charge or mass did not change during the creation process, so the laws of physical conservation held, but The concepts These themselves did not exist in the previous stage. In the world before formation there were no charges, nor masses, and after formation they do exist. Something nevertheless broke here on the philosophical level, even if not on the scientific level. Two new qualities were created here, which did not exist before.

This too is a type of formation that is transparent to the observer using the tools of physics. This is the formation of ideas, not of entities, and therefore is not the concern of physics. And yet, on a philosophical level, this is a formation that requires explanation.

How do we answer this difficulty? To solve the problem of conservation of qualities, we must add to Anaximander's unlimited and undefined matter the properties of the Joule, that is, qualities such as charge or mass. In Platonic terms, these can be called 'ideas'. This matter is still the Joule, since we cannot say that the Joule matter was charged to any level of charge, or had any amount of mass, otherwise it would not be the Joule. The concrete quantities of these charges were created only after the splitting, and then the Joule was removed from the world. But these properties in themselves, that is, the concepts of "charge" and "mass" themselves, were ideas that were potentially inherent in it even earlier. When the particle pairs were created, these ideas were realized in the physical world (just as the horse is realized in the concrete horse).

Apparently, this question is also "transparent" to scientific eyes. Science does not ask itself about the very concepts it uses (where and how they were created), but uses them as if they were self-evident, since they constitute the language and the perception of science regarding reality. Questions about them have no scientific significance, since science operates within them, and the questions it asks are asked within this conceptual framework. We will later note that the creation of charges is indeed addressed in physics (they are seen as a result of symmetry breaking), and yet we see that this claim remains correct in principle.

In other words, it can be said that from a scientific point of view these concepts did not exist at all, since they are not entities. What exists is a certain mass or charge, but not the ideas of "mass" or "charge" themselves. Therefore, these questions are in the philosophical sphere, not the scientific one. There is, of course, a clear connection between these arguments and the question of Platonism, which sees ideas as existing entities.

The meaning of these considerations is that it is possible to arrive at the logical structure of physical theories using a priori philosophical tools. With all due respect for empirical science, we must not underestimate a priori considerations. Many of them also underlie science and its findings. The notion that the findings of science are the result of observations free from prior assumptions has long been known to be an illusion.[4]

The words of the Ramban

We find such a Platonist view in the words of the Ramban. Regarding the verse in Song of Songs 3:9, "King Solomon made him a canopy from the trees of Lebanon," the Ramban writes:

It means from the abundance of wisdom and the radiance that that light became clear and was made glorious by it, and this is what was said in Genesis 1: "From where was the light created? The Blessed One was wrapped like Solomon, and the radiance shone from the end of the world to its end." Solomon is the invitation to the continuation of wisdom that surrounds everything. And was wrapped, it means received radiance from that abundance and the light actually sparkled. This is also the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer the Great, who said: "From where were the heavens created? From light for its clothing, He took and clothed like Solomon, and they were drawn and went, as it is said, "He clothed light like Solomon, and spread the heavens like a curtain." From where was the earth created? From snow that was under the throne of His glory, He took and cast it. As it is said, "For to snow it will be said, 'O earth!'" And this is according to Plato, who says that it is vain for the Creator to invent something from God, because there is material that is found. And he is on the path of an analogy like material for a creator or like iron for a blacksmith, who can draw from it whatever he wishes. Thus the Creator, blessed be He, will draw heaven and earth from matter, and sometimes He will draw from it something other than this. And there is no brevity in the bosom of the Creator, blessed be He, when He does not create a thing full of nothing, just as there is no brevity in His power when He does not invent things that are impossible, such as creating a square whose diagonal is equal to its side, and bringing together two opposites at one moment. And just as this is not brevity in His power, so there is no brevity if He does not create a thing full of nothing except from something, because this is the generality of all the impossible things…

The Ramban explains here that Plato held that creation from nothing is inevitable, and therefore the existence of material matter must necessarily be assumed before creation.[5] In his view, creation from nothing is similar to the creation of a square whose diagonal is equal to its side, meaning that it is logically impossible. This is precisely the principle that we called above the 'law of conservation of being,' and it seems to him that it is so necessary that going beyond it is impossible even in relation to God Himself.

On the other hand, the Ramban, in his commentary on the Book of Genesis (1:8), on the verse: "And God called the firmament of heaven," seemingly contradicts these words, when he writes:

And behold, the Scriptures make it clear that the first created beings came from nothing, and the rest originated from the first created matter. And do not let the statement of Rabbi Eliezer the Great (Chapter 13:3) be difficult for you, who said, "From where were the heavens created? From the light of the clothing of the Holy One, blessed be He." And so it is in Genesis, even more so. Because the sages wanted to elevate the first matter to its ultimate level and make it the thinnest of the thinnest, they did not see that the heavens, which are a moving body with matter and form, were created from nothing. But the light of the clothing was the first created being, and from it came forth the actual matter in the heavens. And He gave the earth another matter, which is not like the thinnest of the first, and it is snow that is under the throne of glory, because the throne of glory was created, and from it was the snow that was under it, and from it the matter of the earth was made, and behold, it is the third in creation:

Here he explains that the world was created from nothing, contrary to his above-mentioned words in his commentary on the Shi'ash. He explains the same midrash from the chapters of Dra here in an allegorical manner.

It is possible that the Ramban intends to claim that the initial hyolic matter was indeed created out of nothing, and that Platonism appears in the second stage: the matter we know today was created from that hyolic matter, and this is because of the law of conservation of being. As we saw with Anaximander, the hyolic matter is separated into various opposites, and this is how the reality we know today was created. The Ramban apparently assumes that in the process of creation (which comes after the initial creation of the hyolic matter) the laws of nature and reason are no longer violated. Here the law of conservation of being already applies, and therefore at this stage creation must be explained in a Platonic manner. In other words, the Ramban disagrees with the Platonic view on a subtle point: while Plato sees the hyolic matter as ancient and not created at all, the Ramban accepts Platonism only in the second stage. The hyolic matter itself was also created at some stage, but here the transitions over the philosophical laws of conservation ended.

  Indeed, we find these things explicitly in the writings of the Ramban in two places. In his sermon "Torat Ha-Ha Temimah", published by the Rabbi Kook Institute, p. 15, the Ramban writes:

  The thing that the Greeks called it by a word that the sages of other nations could not translate into another language, and the Christian sages mentioned it by the word Eli, and the Ishmaelites by the word Yuli, – and it is a matter of interpretation. And it is a creative force that the foundations depend on. And this is explained in the Torah… In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. For the sages of Israel, Yuli was created, in the beginning God created the Yuli of the heavens and the Yuli of the earth, because He created Yuli for this and Yuli for that, to say that they do not have one foundation, as the Rabbi explained in the teaching section. And the consensus of all the sages is this. And from this point on, He did not create anything, but He brought forth something from something.

And also in his commentary on the Torah (Genesis 1:1):

And now hear the interpretation of the Bible in its simplest and clearest form. The Holy One, blessed be He, created all creatures from absolute nothingness. In our language, there is nothing in the Holy One's language that brings forth being from nothingness except the word "created." And nothing that is done under the sun or above, is present from nothingness, a first beginning. But He brought forth from the absolute, complete nothingness a very subtle element, there is no substance in it, but it is a creative force, ready to receive form, and to go from force to action, and it is the first matter, called by the Hebrews "the hyoli." And after the hyoli, He created nothing, but He created and made, for from it He invented everything and clothed the forms and fixed them:

And know that the heavens and all that is in them are one substance, and the earth and all that is in it are one substance. And the Holy One, blessed be He, created these two from nothing, and both alone are created, and all things are made of them:

And this substance, which they called Yuli, is called in the sacred language "Tohu," and the word is derived from their language (Kedushin 42) in Tohu on the first, because if a person comes to derive a name from it, Tohu and the one who calls it will be called by another name, because it did not take on a form in which the name would be perceived at all. And the form taken on by this substance is called in the sacred language "Bhu," and the word is compound, meaning in it is, like the word "Esahu" (Exodus 18:18), which lacks the letter "Yahweh" and the letter "Alef," Esahu is:

Here the Ramban even puts his suggestion in the language of Scripture: "Tahu" is the creation of the hyolic matter, and "Bahu" is the form into which masses and charges will be poured, as well as the other properties that physics deals with.

The conclusion is that in the eyes of the Ramban, the law of conservation of entity is such a necessary principle, literally on a level of logical validity, that even God Himself cannot violate it (although, as we have seen, he explains that this is not a lack of His ability).

The formation of cosmic matter is analogous to that initial point of matter that preceded the Big Bang. The laws of physics and philosophical conservation laws only begin to apply from the time of the Big Bang onwards.[6]

The principle of sufficient taste

What lies behind the considerations I have presented so far is a principle called by Leibniz the 'principle of sufficient reason.' This principle states that everything should have a sufficient reason for its existence. Things do not occur, or are created, without a reason. This reason could be some factor that created them, or from which they came, or some other type of cause. The creation out of nothing, of objects or ideas, contradicts the principle of sufficient reason. This principle is not agreed upon, but it seems to me that it is firmly rooted in our intuition, including scientific intuition (it is actually a generalization of the principle of causality). I mentioned that the Ramban apparently sees this type of consideration as a necessary logical principle. In the discussion from here on, I will assume it.

With respect to the formation of particle pairs from the vacuum, we have seen that the hyolic matter is the source from which they were created. This is a sufficient reason for the existence of something, but it is not a sufficient reason for their formation in this way. A sufficient reason is still required for them to be created as a pair of particles with properties of mass and charge, etc. In other words: a sufficient reason is required for the formation of the ideas that are realized in these particles. Philosophically, God is a sufficient reason for the formation of all of these. I will emphasize again that this is a sufficient reason in the philosophical sense, and not a physical reason (or reason), which is what physics is concerned with.

This formation is indeed described by the laws of physics. The initial matter was the Joule, and the various charges were created through symmetry-breaking processes. The best known of these is the formation of mass, for which the Higgs boson, known as the "God particle," is apparently responsible. It is known for the experiments at the European accelerator in Cerny, Switzerland, which are being searched for in recent years. Other processes are responsible for the formation of the other charges (ideas), and all of them are called "symmetry breakings" by physicists. But these also occur within the framework of the laws of physics. These laws themselves were not created from symmetry breakings, since any such description requires a framework of laws of nature that preceded it, and within which it occurs. At the end of the philosophical (non-scientific) chain of explanation stands God. In other words: the ideas of mass or electric charge were not created from symmetry breaking. This breaking only created their realization in concrete particles. Therefore, a sufficiently philosophical flavor is still required here, which physics does not deal with. It is transparent to it.

For a similar reason, there are many who see God as a sufficient reason for the existence of the world. The cosmological argument for the existence of the world (this is the second type of argument among the three identified by Kant in his first Critique) is based on the assumption that if something exists, there must be someone who created it. It does not exist just like that. Many misunderstand this principle, and reject the cosmological argument on the grounds that the world was never created, but has always existed. Therefore, no sufficient reason is required for its existence.

But this is a mistake. First, the world does not exist for an infinite time. Second, even something that exists for an infinite time requires a reason. Things do not exist just like that, unless they are beings who are a necessity of reality for their own sake (like God). These do not require a sufficient reason, since by their very definition they themselves constitute a sufficient reason for their existence. Just as there is no sufficient reason for parallel lines not to meet (in straight space). It is their very parallelism that causes them not to meet. Therefore, the laws of physics that govern reality, and certainly the ideas that are realized through the laws of physics, require a sufficient reason for their existence, even if we decide that they exist for an infinite time.

The Big Bang

As mentioned, there is a consensus in the physics community today that the world has not existed for an infinite time. It was created almost 14 billion years ago in an event known as the Big Bang. This is not an explosion of any kind, but rather a point in time when the singular point of matter began to expand and create the space within which we exist. With the kind assistance of symmetry breaking and the aforementioned Higgs boson, matter crystallized and became massive, and further symmetry breakings gave it its other physical properties.

How can the question of sufficient reason be answered in this context? Some argue that, at least de facto, this is a problem of infinite time, since the timeline itself was created in the Big Bang. Therefore, they argue, it is meaningless to talk about what was 'before' the Bang, and hence the existence of the world does not require a sufficient reason. But physicists differ on whether it is really impossible to talk about the causes of the Big Bang. For example, one can talk about things that preceded it causally, even if not chronologically. Alternatively, Prof. Larry Horowitz from the physics departments at Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University and several of his colleagues have developed a model in which they talk about two timelines. It is likely that only one of them began with the Big Bang, while the other could perhaps penetrate back or forward through it.

But as I explained, either way, whether time did begin there and it is impossible to talk about what was before, or whether it is possible to talk about what was before or what caused the explosion, the world and everything in it still require a sufficient reason, since there is also a reason that infinite time exists that requires such a reason, at least on the philosophical level. On Rosh Hashanah we receive the message that this reason is God who created the world ("the day that brought forth the world").

Why do we need tradition here? Why, if at all, does science not address this question? Is this question also transparent to scientific lenses? It turns out that it is. We are not dealing here with the causal chain that physics deals with, that is, with the laws of nature and their effect on reality. We are discussing here the question of who created the laws of nature, or more precisely: what is the sufficient reason for their existence. This is a question that by definition lies outside the scope of physics, since physics speaks and lives within the framework of these laws.

The same is true of ideas (physical charges). Physics (the theories of symmetry breaking) deals with their realization in concrete particles, but not with them themselves. Questions concerning ideas, and the hypothetical substance into which, as we have seen, they were cast, are not the concern of physics.

An interesting question is whether the laws of physics were also created in the Big Bang, or did they precede the Bang (to the extent that it is permissible to speak of going forward in time to the beginning of the timeline). But as we have seen, either way they also make sufficient sense. Scientific explanations use these laws to explain phenomena that occur in our world. But who will explain the explainers? On what level will the explanation, or sufficient reason, for the laws themselves be found? Such an explanation lies outside the realm of science, and our faith and tradition offer us an explanation for it: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

[1]  For more details, see Appendix C in my book. God plays dice, Yedioth-Sefrim, 2011.

      [2] The translation is taken from Shmuel Samborsky's book Physical thought in its formation, Bialik Institute, Jerusalem 1987, p. 62 (and it is also mentioned in one sentence in Samborsky's introduction to the book on p. 30). See also The Hebrew Encyclopedia About "Anaximander".

  [3] Immanuel Kant distinguished between the world as it is in itself, the noumena, and the world as it appears to us, the phenomenon. He states that human cognition and science deal only with the phenomenon and not with the noumena.

[4]  This claim does not strive towards skepticism. On the contrary, it favors rationalism, that is, the view that there are no empirical findings without the application of a priori considerations, and this does not diminish their validity. It is the empiricist illusion that is refuted here.

[5]     We note that the midrash in the chapters of Dr. Eliezer, on which the Ramban bases his argument, is cited in the book of Moreh Hanebuchim (Chapter 226) as the most wonderful and puzzling midrash (!) that he encountered in the words of Chazal. The reason for this is that it stands in opposition to the belief in creation from nothing.

[6]  My intention here is not to claim that the Sages or the Ramban pioneered modern physics, and knew about the Big Bang. My intention is only to show that the logical structure of this physical theory (i.e. the division of creation into two stages: the formation of hyolic matter, and then the formation of matter and our world today) can be derived from a priori philosophical considerations, without any physical knowledge.