Stockholm, Sweden… 

December 1965…Three Physicists are being awarded with the Nobel Prize: “for their fundamental  work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary  particles”. One of them is Richard Feynman…  

In his Nobel speech, Feynman worries about ‘people following fashions in thinking & research’.  What he said at that time is still applicable even today, in all the fields of human activity…be it  scientific-technological or artistic or socio-economic-political. He says —  

“…Physical reasoning does help some people generate suggestions as to how the ‘unknown’ may be  related to the ‘known’…Theories of the ‘known’, which are described by different physical ideas  may be equivalent in all their predictions and hence scientifically indistinguishable. However, they  are not psychologically identical when trying to move from that base into the unknown. For  

different views suggest different kinds of modifications which might be made…If every individual  student follows the same (current) fashion in expressing and thinking about [the generally  understood areas], then the variety of hypotheses being generated to understand [the still open  problems] is limited. Perhaps rightly so, for possibly the chance is high that the truth lies in the  fashionable direction…But if it is another direction….who will find it?”  

There’s no doubt — the implications of Feynman’s remarks are profound.  

Let’s consider his remark on relating the ‘unknown’ with the ‘known’ in the context of  ‘representation’ of reality.  

In the previous post, I mentioned three broad categories of reality: a) sensory experiential reality  (SER), b) beyond-sensory experiential reality (B-SER) and c) seemingly transcendent reality (STR).  By these categories I mean the following:  

‘SER’ is the part of reality whose existence can be believed by ‘directly’ experiencing it through our  five senses — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.  

‘B-SER’ is the part of reality whose existence can be believed by ‘indirectly’ experiencing it (e.g. by  ‘seeing’ or ‘hearing’) with the aid of (sensing or detecting) instruments.  

Our representation of SER and B-SER forms the ‘known’ structure of reality — and, this  representation paves many ways to represent STR — the ‘unknown’ structure of reality.  

But why ‘many ways’? why not just a single ‘way’?  

Here we can refer again to what Feynman said — about alternative ways of thinking, not being  psychologically identical, when trying to move from the ‘known’ base into the ‘unknown’. In other  words, different psychologies can come up with different (non-identical) ‘ways’ to ‘connect dots’  from the “SER & B-SER” categories to the “STR” category.  

Example is the FOUR somewhat psychologically non-identical formulations of quantum theory: 1)  Schrödinger, 2) Heisenberg, 3) Feynman and 4) Bohm.]  

This leads to an interesting question: When it comes to connecting the dots from the ‘known’ to the  ‘unknown’, does physics disapprove some of the ways? Does it ‘forbid’ some and ‘allow’ others?  

As the ‘superset of natural processes’ itself, physics doesn’t seem to impose any restrictions,  allowing infinite creative possibilities for ‘happenings’ and including their ‘representations’.  Consequently, ‘any’ way of connecting the dots (including artistic, poetic, literary ways) and  thereby representing the STR is ultimately a natural process happening in the universe.  

So, if it is ‘happening’ then, it is ‘allowed’ as a part of the ‘whole reality’, as a part of physics…  

However, physics as the scientific-philosophical knowledge of natural processes does seem to imply  a criterion for ‘entertaining’ these ways. It can be stated as follows:  

“The entertain-able way from the ‘known’ representation of reality into the ‘unknown’  representation of reality should be such that, if, along the way, some part of the ‘unknown’ can be  claimed to have become ‘known’, then, this ‘newly known’ representation of reality must fully  

encompass the ‘previously known’ representation of reality. By no means the ‘newly known’ should  imply that the ‘previously known’ is incorrect.”  

The representation of reality provided by the 20th century paradigms of relativistic physics and  quantum physics is an example of the ‘newly known’ representation of reality emerging along the  way that connects dots from “the known representation of reality” [provided by the 17th century  paradigm of Newtonian physics] into “the unknown representation of reality” — such that the more  correct ‘newly known’ representation fully and consistently encompasses the less correct ‘previously  known’ representation.  

This way, the finite sphere of the ‘known physics’ keeps expanding into the infinite sphere of the  ‘unknown physics’…  

Exploration continues…  

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