Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum A Single Universe or a Multiverse?

I won't be able to reply to all your comments today. Let me address a few points.

Pasti :''Do you think that any and every observation regarding the surrounding nature can be translated into a mathematical model? ''

There is no proof that it can't be done. According to quantum mechanics (Copenhagen interpretation), observations cannot be precisely expained using a mathematical model. There is no model that will predict outcome of experiments. However, there are other interpretations of QM in which no fundamental randomness occurs.

Also, it could be that QM is an approximation of a deterministic model (see e.g. some papers written by 't Hooft).


Pasti: ''OK, let's suppose indeed that it is worth to try your approach, and let's forget about the evidence and arguments against it. And now let's suppose that you develop your multiverse theory, and you find (and you will necessarily find so) that there are several “universes” infinitesimally close to the observations, within your measure. I.e. you will find several universes, with different degrees of theoretical complexity that fit your observable universe. What will you do then? Which will you choose, with only partial knowledge of the “whole”? So you still need Occam's Razor, and not only that, you will also need all the assumptions one makes in a multiverse, for the obvious reasons. So if indeed you are true to Occam's Razor principle, you have just developed a theory requiring a much larger number of assumptions than the one that is already “on the market”, so by Occam's razor, you should drop it and take the minimal one. Of course, unless you find an effect describable only in your multiverse theory, which unfortunately, by design, is not testable. So what have you gained? Insight? Not any more insight than you could get from the theory on the market. Intelectual satisfaction? Definitely. But unfortunately, the latter is not essential in understanding nature…''

Well, Occam's Razor (or choosing the ''minimal'' model) is a rather vague concept that can be made mathematically rigorous in certain ensemble theories. It is the only thing that you gain in practice, nothing more. The rest is intellectual satisfaction, I agree with that.

Pasti: ''No Ibliss, a theory is not necessarily fully translatable in a mathematical model. Ideally, people hope that it would be, but then historically sometimes it was necessarily to invent the language necessary to translate the theory into (Newton and Leibnitz), sometimes it was not necessary to translate anything into mathematical language to develop a theory (Faraday), and sometimes, there are observations that we don't even know if they are translatable into mathematical language (life).''

Yes, but I don't see why life wouldn't be translatable into a mathematical model. Life is just a consequence of organic chemistry, so in principle life is an emerging phenomenon that should also arise inside computer models programmed to similate the right (relevant) rules.


About electroweak theory, maybe that was not a good example. However, from the perspective of statistical physics, one could argue that the success of renormalizable theories is not surprising. Prabably all the irrelevant (non renormalizable) terms just flow to zero when you renormalize the TOE.