The Event: Particles, Primes, and Other Fundamental Ontological Building Blocks

 

Badiou vs Deleuze & Guattari

The Simili in Multis

from Google AI:

Particles, in modern physical and philosophical interpretations, are increasingly understood not as fundamental, enduring "little balls of matter," but as ontological events or ephemeral, local, and discrete manifestations of underlying, continuous fields. This perspective treats particles as "primes"—the irreducible units or "atoms" of interaction—that only exist when they are created, destroyed, or exchanged, effectively making the act of interaction (an event) the fundamental reality.

Particles as Ontological Events

Epiphenomena of Fields: In quantum field theory (QFT), particles are interpreted as localized excitations or "ripples" of quantum fields, acting as "epiphenomena" rather than the fundamental substance.

Interaction-dependent Existence: A particle is better understood as a conserved exchange of properties (energy, momentum, charge) rather than a continuously existing object. They are "events" that occur when fields interact, not permanent, independent entities.

Events over Substance: This view shifts the ontology from a "substance ontology" (fields or particles as things) to an "event ontology," where the basic building blocks of reality are events of measurement or interaction, such as those described in Haag’s Local Quantum Physics.

Particles as Primes (Irreducible Units)

Indivisible Interactors: Particles are "prime" in the sense that they are the minimal, discrete units of energy or angular momentum exchanged between systems.

Prime Matter (Aristotelian view): Some modern interpretations draw on Aristotelian "prime matter," seeing it as an "indivisible and atomless bare particularity" that acts as an enduring substrate of fields, which manifests as particles.

Numerical Identity: In Quantum Field Theory, particles of the same type are conceptually indistinguishable, meaning they lack individual identity, which reinforces the view that it is the type of interaction (event) that defines the particle, not its own intrinsic nature.

Implications of this Ontology 

Primitive Ontology: PO approaches in quantum mechanics, such as the "flashes" theory (GRWf), suggest that these "events" or "spots" in spacetime are the fundamental, primitive entities from which macrophysical objects are composed.

Measurement and Time: These models suggest that quantum events (such as wavefunction collapse) occur in a present-centered way, emphasizing that the "event" or "interaction" is the moment that makes reality definite.

Ontic Structural Realism: Given that particles cannot be clearly defined, some philosophers argue that the fundamental, persistent entities are actually the mathematical structures (relations) of the fields, rather than the particles themselves.

More from Google AI:

Prime numbers are considered the "atomic particles" of mathematics because, like physical atoms, they are the fundamental building blocks from which all other integers are constructed via multiplication. Recent research has furthered this analogy by modeling prime numbers as physical particles to discover hidden patterns.

Key Aspects of Particles and Primes:

• The Analogy: Just as physical particles combine to form complex matter, prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, ...) multiply to form composite integers, as outlined by the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.
• Modeling as Physical Matter: Researchers, including Salvatore Torquato, modeled prime numbers as a one-dimensional "liquid" or "solid" of particles (spheres) to study their arrangement.
• Hidden Structure: By subjecting this "prime gas" to virtual X-ray diffraction, researchers discovered that primes behave like a quasicrystal—a material with ordered, but non-repeating, aperiodic structure.
• Surprising Order: Contrary to the belief that primes are distributed randomly, this "particle" approach shows they possess a "hidden order" or "fractal chaos".
• Connection to Physics: This "prime-number-as-particle" approach allows mathematicians to use tools from material science and statistical mechanics to analyze the distribution of primes. Some researchers even link prime structures in complex fields to particle physics concepts like leptons and hadrons.

This perspective offers a new way to understand the Riemann hypothesis and the overall distribution of prime numbers.

May the 4th Be with You!

Plato, "Cratylus" (Conclusion)

...SOCRATES: There is another point. I should not like us to be imposed upon by the appearance of such a multitude of names, all tending in the same direction. I myself do not deny that the givers of names did really give them under the idea that all things were in motion and flux; which was their sincere but, I think, mistaken opinion. And having fallen into a kind of whirlpool themselves, they are carried round, and want to drag us in after them. There is a matter, master Cratylus, about which I often dream, and should like to ask your opinion: Tell me, whether there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, or any other absolute existence?

CRATYLUS: Certainly, Socrates, I think so.

SOCRATES: Then let us seek the true beauty: not asking whether a face is fair, or anything of that sort, for all such things appear to be in a flux; but let us ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful.

CRATYLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And can we rightly speak of a beauty which is always passing away, and is first this and then that; must not the same thing be born and retire and vanish while the word is in our mouths?

CRATYLUS: Undoubtedly.

SOCRATES: Then how can that be a real thing which is never in the same state? for obviously things which are the same cannot change while they remain the same; and if they are always the same and in the same state, and never depart from their original form, they can never change or be moved.

CRATYLUS: Certainly they cannot.

SOCRATES: Nor yet can they be known by any one; for at the moment that the observer approaches, then they become other and of another nature, so that you cannot get any further in knowing their nature or state, for you cannot know that which has no state.

CRATYLUS: True.

SOCRATES: Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux, as we were just now supposing. Whether there is this eternal nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heracleitus and his followers and many others say, is a question hard to determine; and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names: neither will he so far trust names or the givers of names as to be confident in any knowledge which condemns himself and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will not believe that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. This may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easily persuaded of it. Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such a doctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you have found the truth, come and tell me.

CRATYLUS: I will do as you say, though I can assure you, Socrates, that I have been considering the matter already, and the result of a great deal of trouble and consideration is that I incline to Heracleitus.

SOCRATES: Then, another day, my friend, when you come back, you shall give me a lesson; but at present, go into the country, as you are intending, and Hermogenes shall set you on your way.

CRATYLUS: Very good, Socrates; I hope, however, that you will continue to think about these things yourself.

Plato, "Parmenides" (Conclusion) 

...Once more, let us go back to the beginning, and ask if the one is not, and the others of the one are, what will follow.

Let us ask that question.

In the first place, the others will not be one?

Impossible.

Nor will they be many; for if they were many one would be contained in them. But if no one of them is one, all of them are nought, and therefore they will not be many.

True.

If there be no one in the others, the others are neither many nor one.

They are not.

Nor do they appear either as one or many.

Why not?

Because the others have no sort or manner or way of communion with any sort of not-being, nor can anything which is not, be connected with any of the others; for that which is not has no parts.

True.

Nor is there an opinion or any appearance of not-being in connexion with the others, nor is not-being ever in any way attributed to the others.

No.

Then if one is not, there is no conception of any of the others either as one or many; for you cannot conceive the many without the one.

You cannot.

Then if one is not, the others neither are, nor can be conceived to be either one or many?

It would seem not.

Nor as like or unlike?

No.

Nor as the same or different, nor in contact or separation, nor in any of those states which we enumerated as appearing to be;—the others neither are nor appear to be any of these, if one is not?

True.

Then may we not sum up the argument in a word and say truly: If one is not, then nothing is?

Certainly.

Let thus much be said; and further let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

Most true.