An Introductory Text on Physical Existence

          “An entity is said to exist if it is communicates with other existing entities.” Let it be explained. To be is to be perceived. Existence is actually a relative property of physical entities determined by the interactions of the entity with other standard entities relative to which it is measured, standard in the sense that it is the measuring frame of reference. Therefore it is meaningless to speak of entities possessing absolute existence by their own. An entity exists relative to another entity if and only if the former communicates with the latter. For example, let us consider two universes A and B, one being our own universe, the universe we live in, and the other, say, an alien universe of the megaverse. If there are no interactions between A and B, then the existence of B can be ignored by A and vice versa, because of the reason that in the explanation of any single phenomenon of one universe the theories require no use of the elements of the other for if it requires a use it would imply that a interaction did take place. Moreover the physical world does not characterize underlying realities beyond observation. Practically speaking, a neutrino would not have existed had it not made itself felt through the weak interactions it does. So basically interactions take place and this makes possible for entities to exist to entities that they interact with. This is what constitutes the physical reality of all the entities of the universe. Therefore we can define existence in the following words:

            “That which exists, can be perceived.”

            It is to be noted that existence is a physical quality, and I am not quite sure whether it is also a physical quantity that can be measured and mathematically analyzed. I leave this task to others to find the best mathematical expressions for this quantity, if possible, which is here qualitatively defined. I will be using this concept in further treatments to other quantities such as space and time.

Before proceeding ahead, I would like to discuss some important things the knowledge of which would be required as a prerequisite. In this paper, terms such as communication, interaction and observation are used synonymously. These terms represent the same thing – the defining aspect of existence. Interactions, however, take place in space and time (or spacetime) which literally means that if an object interacts with another in even a single point in space and at just one instant of time, then that would be enough to make the object to exist relative to the other. The concepts of space and time are very fundamental to Physics, which will be defined later in this paper. Following the lead of Albert Einstein, it is thought that space and time do not exist independently of each other, but are rather mingled into a single quantity called spacetime. Physics primarily consists of two concepts, the ‘object’ defined as the set of aspects of a physical system (a localized entity of investigation) that remains invariant during motion (the change of state of an object), and the ‘state’ of the object defined as the set of all the variable aspects of a system. Physics is thus defined as the study of motion. Therefore, spacetime is but one of the many aspects of the state of a system. So far the existence of physical entities has been discussed: what about the existence of the states of a system! The definition of existence is applicable to states as well. Clearly no such state can ‘exist’ of a system which cannot be perceived (or interacted with) by the system itself which is the observer, or an external observer who observes the system (as the law of conservation of information allows the external observer to access the information of the interaction that took place between the state and the system, thus making it possible, in a chain process, for the state to exist relative to the external observer). If such a state is hypothesized that cannot be observed, it would be more than clear a logical blunder. In the above sense, even states (such as spacetime) interact with an object as do other objects in the rest of the universe i.e. the surrounding, so that they might exist.

            Another important implication of this definition of existence is this: that which exists can be perceived, hence that which cannot be perceived, does not exist. It is an important conclusion of the definition, because it eliminates from a theory all the proposed attributes of a system that cannot be observed. For example, let us assume that a theory predicts the following sequence of changing states of a system: {a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o} where a, b, c … represent the states which change in the given sequence, and a and o represent the initial and final states of the system respectively. But when the system is allowed to ‘move’, the changing states are precisely observed as thus: {a, b, c, d, e, g, i, k, m, n, o}. Now it cannot be reasoned that the states f, h, j, and l does exist but they did not come into observation. If these states are unobservables after all, then they do not exist at all, for all that exists is observable. Hence we reduce the theory to predict the sequence of changing states to be {a, b, c, d, e, g, i, k, m, n, o} eliminating the unobserved. (This is exactly what has happened when the Quantum revolution came into the history of Physics).

 

 

 

[This text is an excerpt from a project I completed last year, March 14 , 2011]