Thank you StrictlyLogical, excellent ~ mulled over your reply for a week.
As there are no other takers I’m penning this as a provisional epilogue.
Fundamentally, is there only ‘spacetime’?
This topic has not managed to tempt out the lurking physicists to engage with Macken’s own reasoning, so no clear-cut answers have surfaced as of yet. But it’s true that, prior to any such engagement, Rand’s Razor might be our most useful tool to scythes away the inept chaff from any remaining grains-of-truth: can ‘the spacetime universe’ concept defy its harshest swipes?
Anyway, StrictlyLogical has provided at least five caveats regarding such a theory (as well as set up the wily Gravity Thread thread in which analogous errors of logic/conceptualization are picked apart).
- Is the theory testable?
- Is there a mental ‘inversion’ of entity attributes with a background attribute for reification purposes?
- Is there any notion that things-as-they-are need an explanation for their very being?
- Does the theory ‘extol zero’ — ‘reducing’ everything to nothingness (of space, time)?
- Is the theory an appeal to monism — only spacetime?
I take these to be shrewd cautions rather than an outright committal of this theory to the flames (are they not SL?).
Each concern should be duly heeded, yet I think most charges can be parried:
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Yes — “how can this theory could be falsified” would be the first question to Macken (I have e-mailed him about this forum thread).
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On mental inversion…
On 4/21/2019 at 3:23 PM, StrictlyLogical said:
Things having possible attributes or properties can always be mentally inverted with a background of attribute or property having a propensity to manifest as a thing.
This dips its toe into deeper metaphysical depths so I think it helps if I re-state/re-work it in my own words to ensure that we are talking about the same thing:
The definition of entity (and its attributes) is absolute existential independence; their existence owes nothing to what is external to them.
(Echoes of my previous thread Ontology via Contrast. All I’ll venture here is to append that absolutes also entail relatedness (and vice-versa), and so the absolute independence of entity, although metaphysically definitional, nevertheless also remains relative to a context of external constraints).
In the context at hand of ‘spacetime’ I think it would be a misreading of Macken to suppose he is arguing in favor of a ‘background’ for entities — his re-scripted definition of ‘spacetime’ already entails entities/energy — so there is no background attribute to ‘mentally invert’ entities out of.
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Macken’s theory seems to grapple with the actual mechanics of existence rather that seeking any ‘requisite underpinning’. Asking “how things work” is the more legitimate approach than “why things exist” (and the former might even eventually satisfy the latter question).
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I think the charge of ‘extolment of zero’ fails to stick once Macken’s ‘spacetime’ is understood as anything but nothing.
Btw, any theory advancing a balancing–out of something (like matter and anti-matter over greater spacial distances) would likewise not necessarily be extolling zero. It may just be an acclamation about physical equilibrium. -
Yes, somewhat, but any ‘ultimate explanation’ might unavoidably appear reductive if stated in a five word nutshell — the universe is only spacetime — ousting-out the integrated emergence of complexity. So I think the resulting ‘appeal to monism’ is the fault of an over-concise summarization of the theory rather than the theory itself (note that book’s subtitle already signals the interplay of anti-monist complexity: Particles, Fields and Forces Derived from the Simplest Starting Assumption).
NB, I take the terms ‘existence’, ‘the universe’ and ‘spacetime’ as being somewhat interchangeable. The statement ‘only existence exists’ also seems kinda monist, until it’s acknowledged that this One is also The Many.
Rehabilitating the question
I spy three presuppositions concealed within the original headline-grabbing question that might well have curbed an Objectivist’s enthusiasm:
- The word ‘fundamentally’ smuggles in the nefarious notion that existence is made up of a hierarchy of levels;
- As outlined above, ‘only’ can be read as a crude reduction to monism;
- Macken’s ‘spacetime’ requires a firmer contradistinction from its standard usage.
An unpacking of these terms in my opening post would have been wiser, allowing the focus to be upon the validity or not of Macken’s physics.
A re-vamped initial question might do the job:
Could the mechanics of the universe be adequately described using a dynamic conjunction of space and time — ‘Macken Spacetime’ — without referring (initially) to any extra ‘stuff’?
P.S.
Supplementary food for thought (a just dessert)…
…Are there actually only two relational existents (from which all other relations are derived): the spacial & the temporal?