In Search of a Theory of Everything

by Demetris Nicolaides

  Stars and galaxies began to form by around February 1 (about a billion years after the big bang) from matter pulled together by gravity. The era before stars (and starlight) is called the Cosmic Dark Ages. Stars shine because of nuclear fusion, the process via which light nuclei combine to form heavier ones, converting mass into energy and releasing light. Nuclei heavier than iron, including silver and gold, are synthesized via fusion when a supergiant star (more massive than the sun) becomes a supernova—dies violently in a cosmic explosion, producing as much light as a galaxy of stars!

  Its death is also life’s birth! For gradually after millions or billions of years, a supernova’s scattered debris, an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, collapse again under the crushing force of gravity and grow into a new star with its orbiting planets that may also develop life. A perfect example is our own solar system. It was born much, much later, around September 3 (about 4.5 billion years ago) from the gravitational collapse of a massive interstellar cloud that was composed from the atoms that were synthesized earlier in the universe, including the heavy atoms made in the stars. Thus, earth and everything on it, including us, are all made of these ancient atoms—if you are wearing a gold ring, you are in a sense actually wearing a portion of a star, for your jewelry’s atoms were once manufactured in a supernova-destined star! Even more impressive, in the words of the great Carl Sagan, we are all “star stuff”! In other words, most of the atoms we are made of were once made inside stars that lived and died millions or billions of years before we or our own solar system were even born.

  Primitive microscopic life forms were thriving on earth by September 29 (3.5 billion years ago), so the first type of life must have evolved much earlier than that. On December 30 (65 million years ago), an asteroid collided with the earth and caused the extinction of many species, including the dinosaurs. But that was a good day for primates because that’s when they started to evolve. Homo sapiens, which are primates, evolved on the last hour of the last day of the cosmic calendar, December 31 at 23:52 (only 8 minutes ago, 200,000 years ago). And at different moments during the last minute of the last day various other significant events occurred. Humans painted fine cave art 1 minute ago at 23:59 (30,000 years ago). They domesticated plants and other animals and gave birth to civilization 23 seconds ago at 23:59:37 (about 10,000 years ago).

  Recorded history, which preceded the construction of the pyramids by a few centuries, began only 11 seconds ago at 23:59:49 (about 5,000 years ago), and the birth of Greek natural philosophy occurred just 6 seconds ago, at 23:59:54 (2,600 years ago with Thales). Our innovative Internet was implemented about 0.08 seconds ago at 23:59:59:92 (in the 1980s), and a 20-year-old reader of this book was born only 0.05 seconds ago at 23:59:59:95. If wisdom is, as the wise say, acquired with time, then human wisdom is only infinitesimal, not at all like that of the cosmos, infinitely universal.

  What will a second such cosmic calendar be like for the universe? Will the universe continue to expand? Will it stop and begin to contract? We are not sure. While the cosmic microwave background and Hubble’s law constitute two of the most significant experimental verifications of the universe’s expansion, an experimental verification concerning the universe’s fate (if a particular one does exist) is yet to be found. Experiments are important because they verify or falsify a scientific hypothesis. Empedocles is known to have done an experiment, possibly the first in the history of science.

  It’s Experiment Time

  While air was the primary substance of matter in the philosophy of Anaximenes, still it was not accepted as a real corporeal substance for two reasons: (1) it is invisible and (2) because other objects appear that could be placed in air or move through it. So, within the context of these reasons, air was thought, at least by the Pythagoreans, to be really the void. But using a clepsydra (a device to lift and transfer liquids), Empedocles overturned such belief by experimentally proving that air is indeed a material substance.9

  Submerge a straw (which is much like a clepsydra) in a glass of water. Water flows into the straw through its bottom opening and fills it as high as is the water level in the glass. But if before you submerge the straw you first cover its top opening with your finger, no water (or, actually, very little) will flow into the straw. This happens, Empedocles argued, because some invisible material, which is already trapped in the straw, presses on the water (through the bottom opening of the straw) and keeps it out; water, in this case, cannot move through this material. This material is air. Only when you uncover the top opening can water once again flow in the straw. For in this case the air in the straw escapes through the top opening, and so an equal volume of water flows in to take its place. (Incidentally, why water or air or any object can move will occupy the mind of the atomists, as will be seen in chapter 12.) In conclusion, since it is not always true that an object can move through air or be placed in it, air must be a material substance, regardless of its invisibility. Empedocles’s reasoning is correct.

  Why Is the Sky Dark at Night?

  The apparently simple question, which is known as Olbers’s paradox, puzzled astronomer Heinrich Olbers (1758–1840), who was probably the first to have asked it, and all others until the cosmology of the big bang was used to resolve it. But it wouldn’t have puzzled Empedocles.

  Assume (as Olbers and most thinkers of his time did) that the universe is static (neither expanding nor contracting), infinitely old, infinitely big, and filled uniformly with (sun-like) stars throughout (the infinity of space and time). If you imagine gazing in some, any direction, your line of sight, Olbers thought, will eventually intercept a star.10 Thus, the sky must always be as bright as the sun. But it’s not. It’s a paradox because the argument is logical, but its conclusion contradicts the evidence. The resolution of the paradox is given by the cosmological model of the big bang.

  The night sky is dark primarily (1) because when we look out in space, we look back to the time of the Cosmic Dark Ages when there were no stars—during January in the cosmic calendar. So the darkness we “see” is the space we “see” before stars existed. The stars we see began to form from February onward and shine in contrast to that January darkness. Moreover, stars don’t last forever; they evolve and die out. Olbers had incorrectly assumed that stars existed forever. By contrast, although Empedocles’s universe is infinitely old like that of Olbers, the cycles of Empedocles’s cosmology allow ingeniously for periods without stars—of Cosmic Dark Ages; thus, the paradox does not hold.

  There are other reasons, too. The night sky is dark, (2) because the afterglow of the big bang, which fills all of space, is microwave, not visible, light. (3) Because of the expansion of the universe, the light emitted by the receding galaxies is redder and fainter than if they remained still. (4) Because the young universe was slightly lumpy, its density varied from place to place. Thus, only the denser regions evolved to be the galaxies, whereas the less dense became the practically empty space between galaxies.

  An equally important question is, why is the day sky bright? It is bright (and blue) only for that part of the earth that faces the sun, during daytime. Because sunlight then, which is scattered by the atmosphere, is seen coming from every direction of the sky. If there were no atmosphere to scatter the sunlight (as is, for example, on the moon), both “day” (when the earth faces the sun) and “night” sky (when the earth faces away from the sun) would have been dark, always—although the patches of the sky that have the sun (and the other stars) would be bright.

  The Origin and Evolution of the Species

  In his effort to understand the origin of the species and their adaptation to their environment, Empedocles, like Anaximander, conceived of an evolutionary theory by natural selection. In the beginning a chancy mix of the “immortal”11 (permanent, unchangeable) elements created all imaginable “mortal”12 (temporary) organic “forms, a wonder to behold.”13 These, though, were just parts, from humans, animals, and plants. And so “many heads sprouted without necks, and
arms wandered bare and bereft of shoulders, and eyes strayed up and down in need of foreheads.”14 That is, until love mixed them in countless ways more, so that the species of plants and animals formed. But only the fit survived; the unfit died. When a human head, for example, combined with a human body, the creature acquired a fitting form and survived, Empedocles thought; but when a human head combined with an ox body, he continued, the creature was unfit and died. Chancy material combinations and natural selection (that is, survival of the fittest and adaptation) are important aspects in both Empedocles’s and modern theories of biological evolution.

  Conclusion

  Empedocles’s pluralistic philosophy was a crucial turn away from the monistic philosophies we have discussed so far (i.e., those that considered water, the apeiron, or air as the only primary substance of matter, or the philosophy of Parmenides about oneness), for it paved the way for the most successful ancient pluralistic philosophy, the atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus. Their theory required myriad particles: the atoms. But before the theory of atoms, natural philosophy had to go through yet another theory of remarkable originality; four primary substances of matter for Empedocles, but infinitely many for the nous of Anaxagoras and everything is in everything.

  * * *

  1Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 340.

  2Telauges, the son of Pythagoras and Theano, was Empedocles’s teacher. See Greek book Προσωκρατικοί (Presocratics), vol. 6 (Athens, Greece: Kaktos, 1999), 229, https://www.kaktos.gr/000967 (accessed July 15, 2019).

  3Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 27–28, 122.

  4Simplicius, Physics 158.1–159.4. Or see Daniel W. Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 251 (text 41).

  5Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe 1.764–769, trans. R. E. Latham (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 28.

  6Plato, Statesman, 268–274e.

  7In relativity, material objects can’t travel faster than light through space, but space itself can expand at speeds greater than c.

  8Jeffrey Bennett, Megan Donahue, Nicholas Schneider, and Mark Void, The Essential Cosmic Perspective, 7th ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2013), 450.

  9Aristotle, On Youth, Old Age, Life, Death, and Respiration, 473b9–474a6. Or see Graham, Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, 387 (text 127).

  10That is, (a) starlight from infinitely distant stars, Olbers thought, will eventually reach our eyes. But that’s arguable because infiniteness is not an actuality (eventuality); it’s only a potentiality. Thus, alternatively, (b) such starlight will potentially be traveling indefinitely (during the infiniteness of time), without ever actually traversing the infiniteness of space that separates us in order to be seen, in which case the paradox is no longer a paradox. Besides, if we are to treat infiniteness as an actuality, as in (a), then (c) an infinitely distant star is actually infinitesimally small, a true point, a zero-size star, a non-existent source of light; thus, the view toward bunches of such stars would be of darkness (not of light), as are the dark patches of the sky at night. But Olbers didn’t think of these alternatives.

  11Simplicius, On the Heavens 529.1–17, trans. Graham, Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, 361 (text 51).

  12Ibid.

  13Ibid., trans. Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945), 54.

  14Ibid., 586.12, 587.1–2, trans. John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London: A & C Black, 1920), chap. 7 (frag. 57).

  11

  In Everything Is Everything

  Introduction

  “Nous [the mind] set everything in order”1; thus, it has the ability to understand nature rationally, Anaxagoras (ca. 500–ca. 428 bce) proposed. Order though, according to him, is not achieved through the consideration of just one primary substance or even four but through a countless number of them, including things such as gold, copper, water, air, fire, wheat, hair, blood, bones, and in general all other existing substances. However, unlike Empedocles’s four elements, which are pure, Anaxagoras’s substances are not; “in everything there is a portion of everything,”2 a notion as bizarre as two of the most popular interpretations of quantum theory, the Copenhagen and the many-worlds.

  In Everything There Is a Portion of Everything

  Every piece of substance, however large or small (at any magnification), contains some portion of everything—portions can be large but infinitesimally small, too, because for Anaxagoras matter is infinitely cuttable. Hence, no one substance is more fundamental (that is, smaller, simpler, purer) than any other. But “each thing is most manifestly those things of which it has the most.”3 A piece of gold, for example, contains gold as well as everything else—copper, wheat, hair—but appears as a distinct golden object because its gold content is the greatest. This does not mean, however, that this golden object contains the substances in pure form, side by side, separated, and identifiable, and the amount of pure gold in it happens to be more. No! To the contrary, no matter how small a bit we may cut from such a golden object, it will still contain a portion of everything—it will never be pure gold. Generally, no part of any object is ever pure, for an object (or any bit from it) can’t both be pure and obey “in everything is everything.” Therefore, despite that this is a golden object, every part (bit, length scale) of the object is also simultaneously watery, woody, milky, bloody, bony, hairy, and every other material; and, in every such part, every material preserves its fixed proportion in relation to all others. But not just that—it gets stranger.

  An object has not only a portion of each type of substance but also a portion of all opposite qualities. As with the substances, these qualities are not to be assumed to be side by side in an object or separated somehow, as if, say, an object has its right side wet and its left dry. Rather, “Things in this one cosmos are not separated from one another, nor are they split apart with an axe, neither the hot from the cold nor the cold from the hot.”4 So every part of an object (e.g., every location in an object), or generally, an object is all the qualities simultaneously and in a fixed proportion relatively to one another. For example, something hot is to some degree also cold. Or white snow, Anaxagoras argued, is to some degree simultaneously black, too—a statement of the same unusual meaning as Schrödinger’s cat being simultaneously both dead and alive.

  Anaxagoras and the Copenhagen Interpretation

  So for Anaxagoras an object is simultaneously hot, cold, wet, dry, hard, soft, sweet, sour, black, white, bright, dark, dense, rare, dead, alive, spinning clockwise, spinning counterclockwise, and all other opposite qualities. This is a peculiar interpretation of nature, for before we observe an object, the most we can say about the state of its existence is that it is a mix of all possible outcomes—of all opposite qualities simultaneously, though each with a different degree (portion) of contribution. Only after we observe the object can we describe it in a specific way, in terms of “those things of which it has the most,” say, as golden, yellow, cold, heavy, and dry.

  Remarkably, such an interpretation is similar to the most popular interpretation of quantum theory, the Copenhagen view. According to it, before an observation, something (an electron, Schrödinger’s cat) is all opposite qualities (potential outcomes) simultaneously too, with each outcome described by its own quantum probability to actually occur. Recall how before an observation Schrödinger’s cat is simultaneously both dead and alive (or how an electron spins simultaneously both clockwise and counterclockwise). And each of these potential outcomes has its own probability to actually happen. Only after we observe, the Copenhagen interpretation states, can we determine whether the cat is definitely either dead or alive (or whether the electron spins definitely in the one or the other direction), and in general, whether an object
is, as Anaxagoras states, definitely golden, yellow, cold, heavy, and dry. If the idea of portion in Anaxagoras’s theory is roughly associated with the idea of probability in quantum theory, then indeed, “in everything [a system of interest] there is a portion [is described by the quantum probabilities] of everything [of every possible outcome].”

  Now the reason Anaxagoras required that various portions of all qualities had to coexist simultaneously everywhere within an object and at all times is that he wanted to remain in accordance with the Parmenidean thesis, that Not-Being does not generate Being, and that Being does not become Not-Being. Something must always exist if it is to be observed, the thesis says. That is, if a quality were not already present everywhere in an object always, it could not have come to be later; because if it did come to be later, it would mean that Being could be generated from Not-Being, but that’s impossible. Hence, a hot object, for example, has to contain simultaneously both hotness and coldness everywhere within it and always, though in different portions. For if a hot object did not contain coldness, too, coldness would have been Not-Being (at least for that object), and therefore it could have never come to be (coldness could have never become a reality, a part of Being)—it would then be impossible for the hot object to be cooled down.

  This concept has a certain similarity with the Copenhagen interpretation but also a certain difference. Concerning the similarity, the reason we may observe the cat to be alive (or the electron to spin clockwise) is that the cat’s (or the electron’s) state of existence before the observation is a mix of all possible outcomes (including opposite ones), that is, a mix that includes a portion (the quantum probability of occurrence) of the alive quality (or the clockwise spin) together with a portion of the dead quality (or the counterclockwise spin). In quantum theory this mix state is expressed mathematically. And the outcome with the highest probability (portion, in the language of Anaxagoras) is the one most likely to be observed.