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Speaker 1: The long arc of physics bends towards what exactly. Over

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Speaker 1: the centuries, we have developed theories to explain the universe,

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Speaker 1: and then seeing them overturned replaced by something new. Einstein's

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Speaker 1: gravity replaces Newton, quantum mechanics up ends a deterministic universe.

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Speaker 1: It feels like progress, but is it. We imagine that

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Speaker 1: there is a single, beautiful, simpol set of laws that

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Speaker 1: control how the universe works, and that with each new

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Speaker 1: idea we are getting closer to the deep truth. But

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Speaker 1: what if there is no single deep truth? Then what

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Speaker 1: is it that we are learning anyway? I'm Daniel, I'm

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Speaker 1: a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and

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Speaker 1: I'm spending my life chasing the truth of the universe.

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Speaker 1: And Welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we don't

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Speaker 1: shy away from trying to discover the truth of the universe,

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Speaker 1: as blindingly bright as it may be. We bring you

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Speaker 1: as close as possible to our current understanding of what's

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Speaker 1: out there in the universe, from particles two galaxies, what

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Speaker 1: we do and do not understand. My friend and co

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Speaker 1: host Jorge is on a break, so I've invited a

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Speaker 1: guest to chat with us today about this journey to

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Speaker 1: understand the universe. I personally see our cosmos as if

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Speaker 1: it was a giant detective novel. We gather clues and

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Speaker 1: try to figure out what is going on. What story

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Speaker 1: out there explains everything that we see. As we collect

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Speaker 1: more information, we can rule out ideas that we had initially.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we get a clue that provides a huge plot twist.

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Speaker 1: What the universe is fundamentally random? What gravity isn't the

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Speaker 1: force after all? Mind blown? Those are my favorite moments

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Speaker 1: in science because they make me feel like we are

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Speaker 1: taking steps towards the truth, like we're on a road

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Speaker 1: towards figuring out what the story of the universe is.

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Speaker 1: Because any good detective novel has to be just one

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Speaker 1: simple requirement. It absolutely positively, without any deviation, has to

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Speaker 1: follow its own rules. No cheating, no magic, no sudden

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Speaker 1: changing of the rules to reveal the murderer. If the

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Speaker 1: reader is going to have a fair chance that puzzling

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Speaker 1: out the answer, then the clues have to make sense.

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Speaker 1: They have to be real hints about the actual underlying story.

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Speaker 1: There has to be a coherent story, one that's self consistent,

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Speaker 1: and we expect that to be true about the universe

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Speaker 1: as well. Most of us who are not philosophers or

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Speaker 1: super skeptics, think that the universe is real, that it's

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Speaker 1: out there, that it's following some set of laws, and

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Speaker 1: that by paying attention we could figure out what those

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Speaker 1: laws are. We feel like we're chipping away at it

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Speaker 1: from different angles chemistry, biology, physics, but in the end

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Speaker 1: we're all working towards revealing a single, larger truth. We're

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Speaker 1: each turning on our own lampposts and shining light on

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Speaker 1: what's under them, with the idea that more light means

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Speaker 1: a better view and that eventually we will be able

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Speaker 1: to see the whole picture. But how do we know

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Speaker 1: that's true. Is it possible that there isn't a single

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Speaker 1: coherent story of the universe, that laws in different contexts

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Speaker 1: and different situations could be incompatible with each other, That

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Speaker 1: each field of science might be its own separate patch,

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Speaker 1: not part of a larger quills. So today on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question, could a grand unified theory

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Speaker 1: of physics be impossible? To help me tackle this grand

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Speaker 1: as dopequest? I've invited a philosopher of physics who spends

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Speaker 1: all of her days thinking about this particular question. So

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Speaker 1: it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast, Dr Katie Robertson.

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Speaker 1: Katie has degrees in physics and philosophy, including a PhD

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Speaker 1: in philosophy from Cambridge. She's now a fellow at the

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Speaker 1: University of Birmingham, where she thinks about how the microscopic

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Speaker 1: laws of physics weave themselves together to form the world

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Speaker 1: we experience, from thermodynamics to the arrow of time and

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Speaker 1: black holes. Katie, Welcome to the podcast, and thank you

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Speaker 1: very much for joining us. Thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: having me. So let's get started by getting to know

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Speaker 1: you and your interests a little bit. Obviously, black holes

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Speaker 1: and the deep mysteries of physics are fascinating, but I'm

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Speaker 1: sure there were many directions open to you, from experimental

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Speaker 1: physics to theoretical all the way to philosophy. What made

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Speaker 1: you choose this path? Why do philosophy rather than theoretical

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Speaker 1: physics or experimental physics? Um well, I think I was

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Speaker 1: always interested in the conceptual questions in physics. Ravans are

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Speaker 1: getting really confused in high school physics and asking my

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Speaker 1: teacher like of what isn't then electron Who's like, well,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of a philosophical question. And so then having

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Speaker 1: studied physics and philosophy together, it was kind of like

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Speaker 1: the philosophy of physics, which was the thing that really

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Speaker 1: kind of grabbed me. And I was really bad at experiments.

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Speaker 1: I managed in my first year labs to get the

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Speaker 1: gravitational constant to be a thousand, So I think that

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Speaker 1: was never going to be an avenue for me. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: what's for the orders of magnitude between friends? Anyways? So

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Speaker 1: do you take that's a philosophical question to be an

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Speaker 1: encouragement or like a discouragement from the physicist? That might

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Speaker 1: seem like, you know, that's not really territory we want

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Speaker 1: you to be asking, But it sounds like you took

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Speaker 1: it as like, yeah, go dig deeper into that. I

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Speaker 1: guess the sociological thing, isn't it whether you think it's

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Speaker 1: a good question or not. I mean, I guess in

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Speaker 1: some ways it's not an encouraging thing. Like if you

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Speaker 1: think something is purely philosophical, you might think that means

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Speaker 1: that it's out of the reach of empirical support, and

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Speaker 1: that's normally seen as a bad thing, right. The key

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Speaker 1: feature of sciences that we can do experiments and get

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Speaker 1: evidence in that way. But I think there's kind of

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Speaker 1: like a continuum between the two, between physics and philosophy,

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Speaker 1: and often in the history of physics, lots of physicists

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Speaker 1: have had certain like philosophical convictions that have led them

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Speaker 1: to their results. So I think it's quite interesting seeing

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Speaker 1: how the two kind of mixed together, So, you know,

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Speaker 1: I I find it quite interesting. But yeah, so some

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Speaker 1: might find it discouraging to find out it's it's a

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Speaker 1: philosophical question. I think that a lot of the questions

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Speaker 1: we do in physics are philosophical, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: physicists have strong philosophical positions, which is usually I don't

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Speaker 1: do philosophy, which is actually, of course a strong philosophical position, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean something like Ironstein, right, with his worries about

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Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, were really driven by like philosophical views of

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Speaker 1: what the world should be like. So yeah, I guess

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Speaker 1: it's one of those things. You know, you've got philosophical views,

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Speaker 1: it's just whether you've explicitly stated them and come to

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Speaker 1: terms with them. Or whether they're kind of hiding buried

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Speaker 1: in new somewhere. So, then, of all the questions in

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Speaker 1: physics and philosophy, what's the one that keeps you up

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Speaker 1: at night? I'm often describing science to our listeners is

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Speaker 1: like just a bunch of people who are curious about

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Speaker 1: the world. Everybody's chosen their one question to devote their

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Speaker 1: life too. So what's the question you would ask like

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Speaker 1: the oracle or super advanced aliens if you had the opportunity.

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Speaker 1: So one question that I have the maybe it's like

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Speaker 1: one of those sort of questions that doesn't have a

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Speaker 1: clear empirical answer that maybe the aliens wouldn't be any

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Speaker 1: better off with. But one question I find really interesting

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Speaker 1: is this question about what the relationship is between like

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Speaker 1: what our theories tell us the world is like and

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Speaker 1: what the world is like. So is it going to

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Speaker 1: be that our um theories, you know, miss out some

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Speaker 1: stuff or are we like using you know, often we

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Speaker 1: have like kind of extra mathematical structure more than what

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Speaker 1: we need in our theories. And sometimes we can know that,

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Speaker 1: we can know there's extra kind of descriptive fluff fur um,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes we don't. So I yeah, I guess I'm

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Speaker 1: interested in, like, you know, how what we should read

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Speaker 1: off from our theories? You know, which bit should we

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Speaker 1: take to be true and really about the world, which

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Speaker 1: bits are kind of just kind of extra stuff that

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Speaker 1: doesn't really correspond to one of them? Wonderful? Well. I

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Speaker 1: love how philosophy lets us ask like profound questions about

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Speaker 1: things that seem ordinary, right, like is our science teaching

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Speaker 1: us anything at all? Or whatever? And one question that

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Speaker 1: I really struggle with is like, why can I watch

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Speaker 1: a ball fly through the air and describe it using

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Speaker 1: fairly simple equations? You know, why is it possible for

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Speaker 1: me to do that? And the naive answer and maybe

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Speaker 1: the listener out there is thinking, well, because the universe

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Speaker 1: follows laws, and we can deduce those laws, no big deal.

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Speaker 1: But I think as a particle physicist that probably those laws,

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Speaker 1: if they exist, they operate at the microscopic level right

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Speaker 1: on particles or strings or whatever the basic bits are.

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Speaker 1: So if I'm watching those basic bits themselves, I can

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Speaker 1: use those laws to describe them. But I'm not right.

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Speaker 1: I'm massively zoomed out. If I'm watching a baseball, it

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Speaker 1: has like ten to the twenty nine particles in it. Why,

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Speaker 1: if I'm looking at ten to the twenty nine basic bits,

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Speaker 1: do I see anything that makes sense? Why isn't it

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Speaker 1: all just fuzz and chaos? I mean, I don't have

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Speaker 1: a simple rule that predicts the role of a die

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Speaker 1: or the movement of the stock market because it's so

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Speaker 1: sensitive to those turned details. Why isn't it always like that?

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Speaker 1: Why when you zoom out in the world, does any

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Speaker 1: sort of simplicity seem to emerge? Can you help us

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Speaker 1: get a grasp on that kind of question? Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean there's been a lot of different responses that people

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Speaker 1: have given, So, I mean there's a kind of defeatist response, right,

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Speaker 1: which is, well, it's very complicated, but we've got to

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Speaker 1: do what we can to make sense of it. And

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Speaker 1: so even though it appears that things are simple, that's

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Speaker 1: just how we have to approach it, you know, in

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Speaker 1: the same way you might think, well, the reason that

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Speaker 1: we have to I don't know, use Newtonian mechanics or

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Speaker 1: do biology and chemistry is just because we're really bad

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Speaker 1: at solving the rod in an equation for complicated systems,

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Speaker 1: and that's why we have these kind of other theories.

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Speaker 1: So that's the kind of like defeatist option, which is

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Speaker 1: that we're just not good enough at solving the really

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Speaker 1: tough things. If we could, maybe we would use those

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Speaker 1: instead to understandable going across the room. So is that

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Speaker 1: saying that the universe really is complicated and that we're

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Speaker 1: just making like a weak approximation of it by describing

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Speaker 1: it simply. It's sort of like it's part of the

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Speaker 1: fact that we're you know, in the same way that

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Speaker 1: if a child doesn't know very much language, then they're

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Speaker 1: going to describe the world in a kind of much

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Speaker 1: less colorful way perhaps than an adult would describe the world.

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Speaker 1: And so that makes it seem like the reason we

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Speaker 1: see any simplicity is like, well, we're just a bit simple,

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Speaker 1: so we have to be able to see things that way,

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Speaker 1: which I find a bit well, it's defeatus. But also

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Speaker 1: I think it would be kind of amazing, right if

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Speaker 1: we were just not very good at describing the world,

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Speaker 1: and the ways in which we did describe the world

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Speaker 1: was so successful, right, Like, it seems like it's not

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Speaker 1: just um, sometimes people have this distinction between the way

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Speaker 1: the world really is versus like what's our perspective on it? So,

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Speaker 1: you know, we see the flowers in the garden in

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Speaker 1: a really different way from how bees see flowers, because

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Speaker 1: our eyes are sensitive different parts of the electromanity spectrum.

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Speaker 1: So you might think, well, maybe some of the simplicity

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Speaker 1: is a bit like the kind of color of the flowers.

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Speaker 1: It's just like how we see things rather than how

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Speaker 1: they really are. But I don't really like that way

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Speaker 1: of thinking about it, because I think we're getting something

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Speaker 1: really right. You know. It's not just that we're using

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Speaker 1: simple laws because we're simple people. Is that there is

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Speaker 1: this kind of macroscopic simplicity out of this kind of microscopic,

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Speaker 1: kind of incredibly complicated stuff going on. Nonetheless, this kind

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Speaker 1: of higher or emergent level, you get this kind of simplicity, right,

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Speaker 1: Like to use your analogy of a child, maybe a

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Speaker 1: child doesn't use flowery language, but when they say me

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Speaker 1: want candy, you understand right, it works. It's successful. And

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Speaker 1: when I'm taking an approximation of something, because they can

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Speaker 1: to the full calculation and taking the first second third

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Speaker 1: order of perturbation theory, I mostly get the answer right

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Speaker 1: and I can ignore the other details. And if the

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Speaker 1: universe was just chaos and fuzz then that wouldn't work right,

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Speaker 1: and it doesn't. For example, when I try to predict

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Speaker 1: the stock market, trust me, I've tried. You know, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't work. So I feel like the defeatist answer seems

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Speaker 1: to totally fail at explaining why simplicity emergence. And also

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Speaker 1: do the defeatists call themselves the defeatists? I guess maybe

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Speaker 1: the more correct way of labeling them it might might

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Speaker 1: kind of methodological autonomy. Like the reason we have this

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Speaker 1: on different things. They have their own conferences, but in

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Speaker 1: large they just talk to each other rather than you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes talk between each other. But you know that the

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Speaker 1: reason we have science kind of like hived into these

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Speaker 1: being the kind of methodological autonomy. It's like, perhaps the

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Speaker 1: answer isn't just that it's you know, it's simpler to

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Speaker 1: use Newtonian physics for calculating what's going to happen with

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Speaker 1: the ball across the park. It's not just that. Is

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Speaker 1: also that that's the kind of right laws to be

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Speaker 1: using at that level. So that would be a kind

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Speaker 1: of different way of thinking about it, where it's not

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Speaker 1: just that we're not very good at solving the Stronian

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Speaker 1: equation for complicated systems, it's it's actually these other laws

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Speaker 1: and equations are kind of more suited. In the same

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Speaker 1: way that if I ask you what the weather is

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Speaker 1: going to be tomorrow because I want to go to

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Speaker 1: the park, the kind of right grain of answer is like,

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Speaker 1: you know, it'll be sunny, it'll be raining. It won't

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Speaker 1: be like to give me a kind of complete survey

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Speaker 1: of what the weather across the whole world's gonna be like.

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Speaker 1: So one alternative answer to just saying well, we've got

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Speaker 1: to do things that way in the kind of defeatist

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Speaker 1: or kind of methodological approach, would be to say, well, actually,

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Speaker 1: there's kind of different laws are appropriate for different things

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Speaker 1: in the same way different tools are appropriate for different

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Speaker 1: tasks or something like that. But does that reject like reductionism,

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Speaker 1: Does that say that those laws ethicals are made for example,

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Speaker 1: doesn't arise somehow from like the too ing and throwing

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Speaker 1: of the basic bits that they emerge at their own level,

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Speaker 1: or you suggesting that they do emerge, that they're just

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Speaker 1: are naturally these different scales which the universe coalesces into simplicity. Right.

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Speaker 1: So I think reductionism is very for debate because lots

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Speaker 1: of people mean different things by it, right, Like some

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Speaker 1: people mean by it again a kind of methodology, like, hey,

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Speaker 1: you want to understand something, look at its component parts.

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Speaker 1: That's the best way to go about doing it. If

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Speaker 1: I want to understand this thing, I want to understand

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Speaker 1: all of its parts, and that's how I'll understand it.

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Speaker 1: That's what a particle physicists would do, for example. And

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Speaker 1: you know that also goes across other sciences. For instance,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you want to understand disease, some people think,

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Speaker 1: really the crucial thing to understand is the kind of

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Speaker 1: genetic factors that lead to that disease. Other people might think, oh,

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Speaker 1: perhaps there's a kind of the environment plays a large role.

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Speaker 1: So there's kind of this kind of theme of understanding

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Speaker 1: things in terms of their parts kind of goes across

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Speaker 1: all the different sciences. I think that's one form of reductionism.

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Speaker 1: Another form of productionism would be to kind of be

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Speaker 1: a kind of more meaty claim about the way the

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Speaker 1: world is, so to say, really, all that exists is

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Speaker 1: the very fundamental particles, whatever they turn out to be

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Speaker 1: in the end, they're going to be all that there

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Speaker 1: really is. Everything else is just the kind of different

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Speaker 1: way of talking about those things, a very complicated different way.

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Speaker 1: But I think that the kind of probably the most

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Speaker 1: useful way of talking about reductionism is to talk about

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Speaker 1: how we understand, like how one theory is related to another.

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Speaker 1: So the kind of obvious example of this is, you know,

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Speaker 1: Newtonian mechanics was very successful. Ultimately we think that it's

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Speaker 1: not quite right, and if things are either very heavy

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Speaker 1: or very moving, very fast or very small, then it

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Speaker 1: doesn't work. But we can show how in certain limits,

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Speaker 1: if your football is being kicked by human rather than

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Speaker 1: a kind of incredibly strong alien, then it's going to

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Speaker 1: be traveling at speeds when Newtonian mechanics is so really good.

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Speaker 1: So we can understand how those theories are related to

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Speaker 1: each other. In particular, we can understand how to construct

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Speaker 1: one theory out of another, you know, in a particular

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Speaker 1: limits you get back your one theory from another. And

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Speaker 1: I think that relationship is really useful for seeing which

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Speaker 1: scales you think different theories will work out, because if

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Speaker 1: you can show that you're going to get back Newtonian

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Speaker 1: mechanics in the low velocity limits, then that kind of

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Speaker 1: explains why Neuchinian mechanics was really good there. And I

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Speaker 1: think that's a way of being that as a kind

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Speaker 1: of one pattern emerging out of another more fundamental pattern

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Speaker 1: in a certain regime. So I think reduction is really

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Speaker 1: helpful for understanding how the different kind of theories and

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Speaker 1: laws that we have all fit together. You asked whether

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Speaker 1: that's compatible with thinking there are laws at different levels,

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Speaker 1: So some people have said no, if you've got kind

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Speaker 1: of emergent laws, emergence, you know, it's one of those words,

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Speaker 1: it's like so controversial what you mean by it. But

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Speaker 1: for some people, emergence just means the failure of reduction.

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Speaker 1: So for those people that story about getting theories back

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Speaker 1: in different limits or whatever, that's going to be a

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Speaker 1: case of reduction. And if there's reduction, then there's no emergence.

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Speaker 1: So there aren't these kind of there's a kind of

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Speaker 1: no meaty sense in which there's these kind of new

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Speaker 1: things at higher levels. Really it's all just the fundamental things,

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Speaker 1: and you can show why you thought there were other things.

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Speaker 1: You can show why you thought there were Newtonian forces,

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Speaker 1: but really there isn't. That was just a kind of

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Speaker 1: old way of speaking. I kind of prefer the view

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Speaker 1: where you think different laws is emerging and they're all

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Speaker 1: kind of on a part with each other in the

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Speaker 1: sense of like some laws are more fundamental than other laws,

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Speaker 1: but none of them are like kind of second grade citizens.

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Speaker 1: You know, they're like you get the laws of Newtonian

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Speaker 1: mechanics emerging house of relativistic laws, but that you know,

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Speaker 1: that's just the right laws have in that domain when

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Speaker 1: things are going nice and slow. Then that's kind of

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Speaker 1: the way to the kind of laws to use. I

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Speaker 1: like your organization of the topics there in terms of complexity,

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Speaker 1: like the idea that maybe Einstein's view of gravity is

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Speaker 1: more complete, but it's too complicated. Like if I wanted

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Speaker 1: to solve the question of like what is the Earth's

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Speaker 1: orbit going to be, and you gave me Einstein's gravity,

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Speaker 1: I'll be like, well, I'll be here for a while,

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Speaker 1: Whereas Newtonian mechanics is going to give me the answer

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Speaker 1: straight away, and it's also going to give me a

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Speaker 1: story that I can tell that I understand. And maybe

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Speaker 1: this is also the argument you're making that some of

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Speaker 1: these laws are just more useful in their explanation. Like

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Speaker 1: if I want to tell you what happened to the

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Speaker 1: ball this afternoon, and then I give you a description

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Speaker 1: of all ten of the twenty nine particles and what

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Speaker 1: each of them did, doesn't really answer your question. But

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Speaker 1: if I say, oh, it flew in a parabola and

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Speaker 1: landed feet from home base or whatever, that's sort of

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Speaker 1: the story the explanation that we're looking for. So does

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Speaker 1: that mean that it sort of depends on the question

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Speaker 1: we're asking, that there are no more fundamental rules. They're

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Speaker 1: just sort of like laws that answer the questions we're asking.

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Speaker 1: So I guess the worry with that is that if

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Speaker 1: it just depends on what question we're asking, you might

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Speaker 1: then think, well, that just depends on what you care about,

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Speaker 1: and so it's really just tied into your interests, and

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Speaker 1: then that kind of starts to look like it's dragging

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Speaker 1: us in the defeatist direction, where it is all connected

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Speaker 1: to what we understand about the world rather than how

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Speaker 1: the world really is. So I think that helpful way

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Speaker 1: to go is to think of what sense is Newtonian

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Speaker 1: mechanics better for describing the trajectory of the ball? And

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Speaker 1: I think that the kind of right answer for that is, well,

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Speaker 1: when somebody asks you a question, you need to give

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Speaker 1: them the right amount of details. It's not just that

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Speaker 1: that's more useful, like that's the better explanation. And so

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Speaker 1: that would then mean the kind of structures and laws

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Speaker 1: associated to the kind of less fundamental theory are doing

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Speaker 1: the kind of best explanation. And normally people think if

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Speaker 1: something's giving you the best explanation, that's the thing we

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Speaker 1: should take to be true. So this is sometimes called

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Speaker 1: inference to the best explanation. What's the reason why the

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Speaker 1: apple fell to the ground? Is it because the fairies

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Speaker 1: pushed it? Or is it because Newtonian mechanics, or is

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Speaker 1: it because I look the wrong way? You know, you

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Speaker 1: can think of all the different possible explanations, and the

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Speaker 1: kind of best explanation is the one that we normally

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Speaker 1: take to be true. So if you can kind of

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Speaker 1: give a reason why these non fundamental theories, you know,

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Speaker 1: we think they're less complete, they're missing some of the

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Speaker 1: details about the world, but nonetheless we think that they're

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Speaker 1: perhaps giving the best explanations. Then we can still be

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Speaker 1: committed to all of this kind of emergent structure, and

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Speaker 1: we don't have to relegate it to just kind of

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Speaker 1: useful stories that we tell. We can really say that

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Speaker 1: it's getting at what the world's like. We're lucky that

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Speaker 1: there's some simplicity, and that's kind of useful for us,

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Speaker 1: we want to say, and that's really this interesting fact

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Speaker 1: about the world. This is kind of deep thing that

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Speaker 1: despite all this kind of fundamental complexity, there's some kind

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Speaker 1: of relative simplicity at the kind of less fundamental or

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Speaker 1: macroscopic level. Okay, I can't wait to dive deeper into

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Speaker 1: that topic, but first we have to take a quick break. Okay,

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Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking with philosopher Katie Robertson about

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Speaker 1: whether the universe makes sense, whether there is a single

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Speaker 1: theory of physics out there. And it certainly seems convenient

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Speaker 1: that there are sometimes simple stories that you can tell,

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Speaker 1: and I certainly get the argument that, like, sometimes those

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Speaker 1: simple stories really are the answer. You don't necessarily want

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Speaker 1: the totally microscopic picture in every sense. But the thing

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Speaker 1: that still puzzles me is why that's possible, And the

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Speaker 1: thing I can't get over is the fact that sometimes

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Speaker 1: it's not. You know, sometimes we look at systems and

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Speaker 1: they are complex, and our approximations fail, and we can't

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Speaker 1: find a simple story to describe the path of hurricanes

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Speaker 1: or the fluctuations of the stock market. So it can

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Speaker 1: just be that we're looking at the universe and we're

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Speaker 1: asking these questions, we're always able to find some simple

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Speaker 1: story because we are not. So it makes me wonder

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Speaker 1: why they emerge in some cases and not in others,

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Speaker 1: and specifically why they seem to emerge at various scales, right,

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Speaker 1: Like you say, we organize ourselves into physics and biology

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Speaker 1: and chemistry conferences. Is that because of some human interest

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Speaker 1: in the way the universe works at these levels? Or

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Speaker 1: is because the universe itself, you know, reveals itself and

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Speaker 1: simple stories only at some scales and not at some

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Speaker 1: other scales. If aliens are doing science on some other planet,

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Speaker 1: are they also doing physics and biology and chemistry and

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Speaker 1: having separate conferences the way they don't talk to each

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Speaker 1: other or do they have like a different ladder of

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Speaker 1: science is completely because of their own history. Is there

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Speaker 1: any way to grapple with those questions to try to

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Speaker 1: get the sense for why science seems to be simple

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Speaker 1: at some skills and not at others. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: a really interesting question, right. The philosopher jerryford Or, I think,

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Speaker 1: said something. I'm want to fudge the quote a bit,

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Speaker 1: but it's something like, I expect to find out the

431
00:22:19,800 --> 00:22:23,520
Speaker 1: answer to why we have something other than physics. Why

432
00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:25,280
Speaker 1: isn't it just that we only have to do physics

433
00:22:25,359 --> 00:22:27,480
Speaker 1: and we don't have all these kind of different scales

434
00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:29,560
Speaker 1: and levels of which we talk about the world. He

435
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:31,480
Speaker 1: said something like, I expect to find out the answer

436
00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:33,880
Speaker 1: to that question the day after I find out why

437
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:36,200
Speaker 1: there's something rather than nothing, you know. He kind of said,

438
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:39,119
Speaker 1: this is a bit of a million dollar question. To

439
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:40,720
Speaker 1: my mind, I think there's going to be lots of

440
00:22:40,760 --> 00:22:43,320
Speaker 1: different answers to that, rather than one answer that fits

441
00:22:43,400 --> 00:22:46,360
Speaker 1: the relations between all different scales. So I think, as

442
00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:49,480
Speaker 1: is often the case in understanding how different scientific theories

443
00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:51,240
Speaker 1: are related to each other, the devil's going to be

444
00:22:51,240 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 1: in the details. So I think, in the case of

445
00:22:53,800 --> 00:22:56,720
Speaker 1: thinking about how we get kind of directed processes like

446
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:00,320
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee cooling down or glass smashing the floor.

447
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:02,120
Speaker 1: You know, these processes that we think of as being

448
00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 1: directed in time, how we get that kind of macroscopic

449
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:09,560
Speaker 1: pattern out of the microscopic pattern in so, how we

450
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:11,320
Speaker 1: get that from the microdynamics, and how we get to

451
00:23:11,359 --> 00:23:14,720
Speaker 1: statistical mechanics. That's one area where I think we can

452
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 1: see how that happens, how we get that emergence. So

453
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:20,239
Speaker 1: what we have in that case is that we have

454
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: a description that's really kind of detailed at the lower level. Right,

455
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:26,360
Speaker 1: there's ten of the twenty three molecules and a gas.

456
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:29,920
Speaker 1: That's a very complicated description. We can instead of talking

457
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 1: about exactly where molecule five and fifty three is, we

458
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:36,680
Speaker 1: can talk about some kind of average properties of the gas.

459
00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 1: So we can talk about kind of what's sometimes called

460
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:42,360
Speaker 1: a kind of coarse grain probability distribution. Instead of following

461
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:45,439
Speaker 1: exactly where every single passicle is, we just say on average,

462
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: there's a kind of an even smearing of them across

463
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:50,160
Speaker 1: the box, for instance. And this kind of course graining

464
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 1: type procedure is a bit like averaging. You know, you

465
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: throw away some of the details, and sometimes when we

466
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,399
Speaker 1: do this we can kind of uncover new patterns. We

467
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 1: can see that oh, actually, there's kind of a rule

468
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 1: about how this kind of new variable that we've defined works.

469
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 1: And sometimes when we do that, when we kind of abstract,

470
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: sometimes you might think of it as being, you know,

471
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 1: you're kind of throwing away some details like abstracting to

472
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 1: a new variable. Sometimes then we find a new law

473
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:18,040
Speaker 1: in terms of that variable. So in the case of

474
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:22,720
Speaker 1: statistical mechanics, we can throw away information about the correlations,

475
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,120
Speaker 1: the kind of three or more practical correlations. Gas molecules

476
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,159
Speaker 1: are all bump into one another and getting correlated with

477
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: each other. You can throw away the kind of three

478
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: or more partical correlations in such a way that you

479
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:35,800
Speaker 1: can find a kind of new dynamics at the higher level,

480
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:38,199
Speaker 1: where you've kind of got this course grain dynamics, or

481
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:40,440
Speaker 1: something like the Boltzmann equation, which tells you how quickly

482
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 1: gases relax the equilibrium. That is kind of an example

483
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 1: of these coarse grained error of usal dynamics. So in

484
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: that case you've got kind of like a detailed story

485
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:51,440
Speaker 1: about how you've got this higher level emergent kind of

486
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:55,439
Speaker 1: description and structure in those specific cases. But you know,

487
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 1: there's also other cases where you might use something a

488
00:24:57,520 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 1: bit like course graining to kind of throw away the

489
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:01,040
Speaker 1: details that you're going to be able to follow. And

490
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:03,399
Speaker 1: sometimes that's good and you can find an equation. Sometimes

491
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:05,680
Speaker 1: you can't, Like there's those really bad ways to average

492
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:08,479
Speaker 1: or course grain, and that you get nothing out of him, right,

493
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: Like it's there's this nice quote by this I think

494
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: he's a historian of physics Van camp And who says

495
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:16,879
Speaker 1: it's kind of the art of the physicists to find

496
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: the right variables rather than a kind of science of

497
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: like exactly how should we treat choose to course grain.

498
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 1: There's the kind of a lot of bad choices you

499
00:25:24,359 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 1: can make, but in some cases you can find a

500
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 1: kind of close form dynamics. And that's the case where

501
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:30,879
Speaker 1: we think we found like a new pattern. But you

502
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: make it sound like a discovery, like you're stumbling over something.

503
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 1: You're like, ah, look, the universe is doing this thing right,

504
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: like we're coming into it. We don't necessarily understand why

505
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 1: it's possible to go from statistical mechanics description of all

506
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:47,119
Speaker 1: those tiny little particles to like you know, thermodynamics of

507
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:49,400
Speaker 1: gases and all this kind of stuff. And you use

508
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:51,919
Speaker 1: the word abstraction, which I find really interesting because it

509
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 1: tells me that we're like summing up a lot of details,

510
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: were saying, forget all the details of what's in here,

511
00:25:56,440 --> 00:25:58,359
Speaker 1: I'm just going to call this thing a ball and

512
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: treat it like a point, right, where like dracting away

513
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:03,040
Speaker 1: a lot of the details. And how do we know

514
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 1: that that kind of abstraction isn't sort of arbitrary or cultural? Right?

515
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,920
Speaker 1: Is that us imposing our view on the world, like, oh,

516
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 1: this is interesting, that's not interesting, I want to tell

517
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: a story about this, Or is it the universe coalescing

518
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: around something like Again, I wonder whether that's us forcing

519
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:22,399
Speaker 1: our sort of mental structure on the universe because we

520
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: can't possibly process all the details, or if it's really

521
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: that we're discovering this in the universe. How could we

522
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 1: possibly know the difference between those two scenarios without, of course,

523
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: talking to aliens about their science. How phony we can

524
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:37,639
Speaker 1: meet those aliens. So people used to think that it

525
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: really was due to like our not being able to

526
00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 1: kind of keep ahold of all of the details that

527
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:46,080
Speaker 1: we use the kind of course graining procedure in statistical mechanics.

528
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 1: So people thought that the way we chose the kind

529
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: of averaging technique was according to what we could measure.

530
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: You know, we can't precisely know exactly where each molecule

531
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: is in the in the box of gas. Then they

532
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:00,040
Speaker 1: use that as a kind of motivation for why you

533
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 1: could then course grain and throw away some of the

534
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 1: details because we couldn't measure it. But I actually think

535
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 1: that's a really bad explanation of why we cause grain,

536
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:09,920
Speaker 1: because it's not like, as we've got better at measuring things,

537
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,439
Speaker 1: we use different course graining schemes in statistical mechanics, right,

538
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 1: So it's not really linked to what we can see

539
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:20,040
Speaker 1: in inverted commerce because if it were, then as what

540
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: we see can change, we would change kind of averaging

541
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: or course graining technique. So I think that for that reason,

542
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: it's more like the kind of discovering new patterns way

543
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: of thinking about it rather than it being kind of

544
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: connected to us, because if it was connected to us

545
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: and we change, would expect to see a change connected

546
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,640
Speaker 1: to that. So yeah, in the in the staff Met case,

547
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 1: they really did think that. You know, there's some amazing

548
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: quotes about the time asymmetry that comes out of it.

549
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 1: I think somebody described it. I think Pritage and Stayer

550
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 1: subscribed it as allusory kind of resulted kind of entropic

551
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:51,639
Speaker 1: asymmetry that you get. Somebody else says it's kind of

552
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:54,199
Speaker 1: just anthropocentric, you know, it's a feature of us. But

553
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:56,919
Speaker 1: I think that once we understand that these techniques that

554
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: we have of abstracting and throwing away details, they're not

555
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 1: necessar seratly connected to what we know about the world

556
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:05,399
Speaker 1: in any kind of detailed way. It might be that

557
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 1: we're kind of attending to certain features of the world

558
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 1: rather than other bits. You know, we're not focusing on

559
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:12,880
Speaker 1: all the kind of what's this particle doing over here,

560
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: and what's this one doing over here? And I'm going

561
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: to keep a track of what every single particle and

562
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: the gas is doing. I'm just gonna be interested in

563
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: a bit more of a zoomed out way. But that

564
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 1: zooming out isn't I think connected to kind of our

565
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,840
Speaker 1: perspective on the world. This is interesting sort of second

566
00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 1: class nature to things that emerge that we talked about

567
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:32,640
Speaker 1: all the time in particle physics. So I never really

568
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: thought of it as like, you know, derogatory. But you know,

569
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 1: there's recent ideas about how space itself and maybe even

570
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: time are not fundamental to the universe they emerge, meaning

571
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: that you could have a universe without space before the

572
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 1: quantum bits of woven themselves together into reality, or you

573
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: could have a universe without time. And it's sort of

574
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: like demotes those things and says they're not essential, they're

575
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: not fundamental, And it seems to me like you're making

576
00:28:57,680 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: the argument that they shouldn't be a demotion, that there's

577
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: just you know, there's a set of these ideas and

578
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: different ones are applicable in different places, in different contexts,

579
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: but we shouldn't think of the most fundamental is necessarily

580
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: the most primary or the most true. Is that fair?

581
00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think so. There's a kind of tendency

582
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 1: sometimes in philosophy to really only focus on the fundamental.

583
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess Um Anderson and his famous more

584
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:24,040
Speaker 1: is more as different paper right, was kind of pointing

585
00:29:24,080 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: to a similar tendency within physics. He were saying, Look,

586
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 1: it's really important to look at these other areas of physics,

587
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 1: not just fundamental physics. And yeah, I think it's right

588
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: to think of these non fundamental things as not kind

589
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 1: of second class in that way, not just because you know,

590
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:44,840
Speaker 1: condensed matter physicists want funding to um but because they're

591
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:46,720
Speaker 1: also telling it's true things about the world. And it's

592
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting conundrum I think connected to the

593
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 1: one that you mentioned at the outset about you know

594
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:53,480
Speaker 1: why is why is it all not just kind of

595
00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: buzzing confusion? Why do we get the simplicity? I think

596
00:29:55,760 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 1: an interesting question is, you know, even if we were

597
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: to understand the very kind of fundamental nature of the world,

598
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 1: that'd still be so much we didn't know, right, Like

599
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:08,239
Speaker 1: we wouldn't understand stereotype threat in psychology or something, you know,

600
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: Like it's not like just knowing about the fundamental is

601
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 1: enough to give for you the kind of knowledge of

602
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:15,920
Speaker 1: all these other levels. So I think, yeah, understanding these

603
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: levels is really important as well. Yeah, I think you're right.

604
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: And obviously, even if we had like string theory or

605
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: the most fundamental theory, it wouldn't tell us, you know,

606
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 1: how do you raise your children, or how do you

607
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 1: make chicken soup? You know, or even where is the

608
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: ball going to fly when somebody hits it with a bat.

609
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 1: And I think maybe the primacy comes because some people,

610
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: not everybody, are interested in the most fundamental questions. They

611
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 1: want to know what is the most fundamental picture of

612
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: the universe, even if that is not relevant to our

613
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: everyday lives and too important questions like how can we

614
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: build a faster computer? You know, etcetera, etcetera. Something that

615
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: confuses me about these non fundamental theories, these effective theories,

616
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: you know, the ones that work so well fluid dynamics

617
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 1: and galaxy in formation, is that they feel sometimes inconsistent,

618
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: you know, like, for example, the basic equation of fluid dynamics,

619
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 1: because the Naviti Stokes equation makes this assumption that the

620
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 1: fluids you're describing is continuous, that it's explicitly not made

621
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: of tiny little bits like like of saying, but of

622
00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: course we know that they are right. So shouldn't theories

623
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: like fit together more smoothly? I mean, I love how

624
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: Newtonian theory is an extreme case of Einsteinian theory, but

625
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: that seems like is that maybe an exception because in

626
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: other cases, you know, the assumptions you have to make

627
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 1: at different levels are incompatible. It gives me a sense

628
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: of science is more like you know, a disjoint patchwork

629
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: than really like a smooth idea that you're like shining

630
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: a lamp post on at different scales. Yeah, that's a

631
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 1: really interesting question because you know, one way to get

632
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: around the fact that the navious equation says that everything

633
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: is continuous is to say, well, instead of it's saying

634
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 1: this false thing, we're just gonna say that it shouldn't

635
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: say anything about that. You know, we should just reinterpret

636
00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: it as like not committing either way. And so you

637
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 1: can kind of think of a kind of selective approach

638
00:31:57,120 --> 00:31:58,920
Speaker 1: to your theories, you know, like some bits of the

639
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: we shouldn't take too seriously. And that's often what people

640
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: have thought about old theories, right, which is they got

641
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:05,880
Speaker 1: some bits right and they've got some bits wrong. And

642
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 1: one way that sometimes people like to think about the worlds,

643
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 1: which comes back to this question of how our theories

644
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 1: relate to the world, is that not everything they say

645
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 1: is correct. So some people want to say that the

646
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 1: really important thing that's kind of continuous between the different

647
00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:23,840
Speaker 1: scales and continuous across and theory change is the kind

648
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: of mathematical structure, the kind of extra details about what

649
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: the kind of furniture of the world is, like whether

650
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: fluids are continuous or not. That's the kind of thing

651
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 1: where historically they've got it a bit wrong, but normally

652
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:38,959
Speaker 1: the mathematical equations are at least approximately the right thing.

653
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 1: So this is sometimes called like structural realism, And the

654
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: idea is that instead of kind of taking your scientific

655
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:47,760
Speaker 1: theory at its word, you should really only be committed

656
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: to the kind of mathematical structure of the theory. But

657
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: doesn't the math come out of these assumptions that you

658
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: start from these assumptions and then you can build the

659
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: math on top of them and like the axiomatic foundations

660
00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 1: of the theory, right, how can you have the math

661
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:02,480
Speaker 1: without foundations? Well, this is a kind of a tricky

662
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 1: question for the structural realists, right, they want to say

663
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: the laws, we're getting those right, But what the kind

664
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: of objects in that those laws are we're not quite

665
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 1: social about. I mean, quantum mechanics is are kind of

666
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: clear case for this, right, Like we're really confident about

667
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: the strouding your equation exactly what quanstant particles are? Like,

668
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna end up whether a big disagreement

669
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 1: when you have a group of this discussing it. So

670
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 1: the idea is that it's kind of like epistemic security.

671
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to put your neck over

672
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: the parapet too much. You've got to just commit to

673
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 1: the bits of your theory that you think are really

674
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 1: kind of secure and good. And maybe these are these

675
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: assumptions about, for instance, fluids being continuous are kind of

676
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: the kind of ladder or scaffolding that helps you get

677
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 1: to your theory. But you can kind of kick away

678
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: afterwards and say, the thing I'm really confident about and

679
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 1: I think is getting at the nature of the world

680
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: is the kind of equations and the math. But everything

681
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 1: else I'm going to just not commit too much. Too well.

682
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: I can't be too critical of that kind of strategy,

683
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: since as a particle physicist, I couldn't even really tell you, like,

684
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 1: what is a particle? After all? Right, And you're right,

685
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 1: we certainly do a lot of particle physics, and we

686
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: collide them and we describe them, and we have excellent

687
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:12,560
Speaker 1: descriptions of them without even really knowing what it is

688
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: we're talking about. So I definitely have very little ground

689
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:18,359
Speaker 1: to stand on there. Okay, I have a lot more

690
00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: questions for you, Katie, but first we have to pause

691
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 1: for another quick break. All right, we're back and we're

692
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: talking to Dr Katie Robertson, a philosopher of physics, about

693
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: whether it's possible to understand everything in the universe with

694
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:46,800
Speaker 1: a single theory. I want to take us in another direction,

695
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:49,360
Speaker 1: which is sort of further down this skeptical road. You know,

696
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 1: if each science is helping us understand a part of

697
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 1: the world, and if we say, you know, each one

698
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:56,840
Speaker 1: has our own area of validity, is it possible that

699
00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: we can eventually stitch them together to get a whole

700
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:02,960
Speaker 1: list day understanding of the underlying truth. The idea being

701
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: like the more lamp posts you turn on, the more

702
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: ground truth you're revealing. And I'm reading this book by

703
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:11,439
Speaker 1: Nancy Cartwright who has this school of thought. Her book

704
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: is called The Dappled World, and she seems to be

705
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: arguing that there might not be unity to science, that

706
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 1: there isn't a whole truth underneath it, that we're revealing,

707
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:23,400
Speaker 1: that each piece could actually be separate and not link

708
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: up into a coherent picture. Frankly, as a somebody who's

709
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: born and bred as a particle physicist, I struggle to

710
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:31,960
Speaker 1: comprehend this argument. What is the argument here? Can you

711
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 1: walk us through how to get to that sort of

712
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: state of mind? So I guess you can think of

713
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: there's being kind of two issues. The first is we

714
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: seem to go about doing science in this very kind

715
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:48,239
Speaker 1: of institutional each in this kind of patchworkboy, right, the

716
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 1: kind of I think she describes it as like, you know,

717
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: some of the edges line up neatly, others are kind

718
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 1: of afraid and they don't quite connect. You know, some

719
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 1: disciplines really do kind of fit together with each other

720
00:35:57,360 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: in a nice way, and other ones that's a bit

721
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 1: more complicated. But we seem to get away with doing

722
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:04,359
Speaker 1: things like that. So there's kind of one question which

723
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:09,240
Speaker 1: is like, how can we do that if really everything

724
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: is made up of whatever the most fundamental stuff is

725
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:15,359
Speaker 1: why did we get away with ignoring those details? Which

726
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:17,839
Speaker 1: is kind of the question that we started with um.

727
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 1: And then the question on the kind of other side

728
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 1: is if you think that all these patches don't line up,

729
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 1: they're not unified, then how come we sometimes have processes

730
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:30,240
Speaker 1: like kind of you can think of like a causal

731
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: process is leaping across patches. And when we have, for instance,

732
00:36:33,719 --> 00:36:36,600
Speaker 1: m R I scans for the detection of disease, for instance,

733
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:39,200
Speaker 1: that seems like a case where we can't say or

734
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: biology is just about something like totally different from physics,

735
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: Because if that were the case, why would physics be

736
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:48,239
Speaker 1: so useful in understanding things in biology? So I kind

737
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:51,360
Speaker 1: of see the patchwork view as giving you an easy

738
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 1: answer to the first problem. Why is that all these

739
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:57,440
Speaker 1: different things at different levels, Well, there's just different things

740
00:36:57,440 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 1: going on at different levels. There isn't this kind of

741
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 1: unified picture. So it kind of gives you an easy

742
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 1: answer to that question. But then you have a hard answer,

743
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: which is, well, if these patches are kind of insulated

744
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 1: from each other in this different way, why is it

745
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:15,319
Speaker 1: that there's these kind of it looks like kind of

746
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 1: causal processes going between them, or kind of threads running

747
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:23,360
Speaker 1: through different sciences. So I think that's part of the motivation.

748
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 1: But another key part of Cartwright's picture is that she

749
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 1: has a I think it was the book before the

750
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 1: daff Wled World, a book with the title how the

751
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: Laws of Physics Lie clickbaid, clickbaid. It's from the eighties,

752
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:39,760
Speaker 1: but definitely you know the original philosophy physics clickbait where

753
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: she argues that you know, our laws are so abstract

754
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: and they apply in such tightly controlled situations and the

755
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: lab that we're used to kind of screening off the

756
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 1: kind of noise from the environment, but really kind of

757
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:55,480
Speaker 1: out in the wild. The laws is kind of a

758
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:58,840
Speaker 1: lawless land, you know, the laws that we're used to having,

759
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:01,359
Speaker 1: we have no have good reason for thinking that they

760
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 1: would carry across, which is a view I find hard

761
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 1: to stomach. And like you, I like the idea of

762
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 1: there being kind of the different things happening at different scales,

763
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:12,799
Speaker 1: but I still like thinking that it's kind of all

764
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:16,919
Speaker 1: connected in there's these kind of links between them. Things

765
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 1: emerge out of other things, And I'm they're fan of

766
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: the more emergentist type view than the patch Bork view,

767
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: but that's that's the motivation. I think. Well, I'm sort

768
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: of shocked that you describe the picture of there are

769
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: just different rules for different situations. It's sort of like

770
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,959
Speaker 1: the easy answer, because that like rocks me to the core.

771
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 1: I have a hard time understanding, like with then what

772
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 1: is the universe right? Like how does it decide when

773
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: to use one set of laws and another set of laws?

774
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: In carent writes books, she has this quote which when

775
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 1: I've read this, I'd like dropped the book. I couldn't

776
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,360
Speaker 1: believe it. She says laws of nature are limited in

777
00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:51,640
Speaker 1: their range and regions that seem to overlap. There may

778
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:55,760
Speaker 1: be no rules at all for composing the separate effects,

779
00:38:55,840 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: and some situations may not be subject to law at all.

780
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,520
Speaker 1: It happens happens by hap, which is like, is the

781
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 1: universe whimsical? Is it just like making stuff up as

782
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:09,480
Speaker 1: it goes along? I mean, that's certainly not my experience

783
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 1: of the universe and the experience of experimental physics for

784
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:15,080
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. Is this sort of like a an

785
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: exercise and skepticism by Cartwright? Like, how do we really

786
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: know that the laws that we isolate in the laboratory

787
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 1: also apply out on the wind blown streets? Or do

788
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 1: you think is really a coherent philosophical position and one

789
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:32,799
Speaker 1: that's revealing our blinders? Are you know, the assumptions we've

790
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:35,399
Speaker 1: been making about the universe because of the way our

791
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:37,879
Speaker 1: minds work. It's an interesting question because I think that

792
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:40,399
Speaker 1: I kind of have the same gut feeling as you

793
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:43,440
Speaker 1: in that when you think about describing a bigger and

794
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:46,239
Speaker 1: bigger system, there's no point where you're told, no, don't

795
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:48,279
Speaker 1: take the tensive product of those two systems together. The

796
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,319
Speaker 1: shortening equation, it will stop working. So it doesn't seem

797
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:54,320
Speaker 1: to really go with what our experience of doing physics

798
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 1: is like. But Cartwright is very sensitive, I think, to

799
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:01,279
Speaker 1: the kind of details of the practice of physics in

800
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:05,239
Speaker 1: a way that sometimes philosophers have just assumed, well, there'll

801
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:07,239
Speaker 1: be a theory that applies to everything, and they've sort

802
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:09,640
Speaker 1: of just taken it as this kind of brute fact

803
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: about the way the world is. And I guess I

804
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: see her as sort of like poking at that assumption

805
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: and saying, well, how well justified is that? I think that, Yeah,

806
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 1: my my hunch is that I think that we can

807
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 1: say that it's a world just assumption and that it

808
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: hasn't not worked so far. But equally, I guess I

809
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:34,279
Speaker 1: think her emphasis on just how tightly controlled certain experimental

810
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: contexts are and being careful about kind of exporting that

811
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,279
Speaker 1: to other cases, I think it is an important thing,

812
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 1: And I think at the beginning of her book she

813
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 1: has this kind of way of casting what she's doing

814
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: is a slightly different approach. So she says there's kind

815
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: of two enterprises that science is involved in representing the

816
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:57,840
Speaker 1: way the world is, and then intervening on the world,

817
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:03,120
Speaker 1: and obviously others answers, like medical sciences obviously really interested

818
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: in the intervening parts in medicine. Sometimes we know exactly

819
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: what to do to help something, we don't necessarily know

820
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 1: the mechanisms behind it that mean that that works, but

821
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 1: we know how to intervene on the world sometimes at least.

822
00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: And she kind of puts herself in the camp of saying,

823
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:22,439
Speaker 1: I'm not as interested in the project of representing the world.

824
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:24,880
Speaker 1: I'm more interested in the project of intervening on the world.

825
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:29,400
Speaker 1: But she worries that the by not thinking about how

826
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:31,279
Speaker 1: we want to intervene on the world, the fact that

827
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,400
Speaker 1: that's what she's interested in. She has these kind of

828
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:36,720
Speaker 1: lovely pictures where she shows like that maybe you remember

829
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:38,320
Speaker 1: them from the beginning of the book, where it's like

830
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:40,839
Speaker 1: kind of like the messy house and then the tidy house,

831
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:42,799
Speaker 1: and she kind of says, we need to understand that

832
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 1: the world is kind of messier than we think that

833
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,720
Speaker 1: it sometimes is, because then when we want to intervene

834
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 1: on the world, we're going to be more successful in

835
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:51,959
Speaker 1: doing so because we've got a kind of better idea

836
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:54,239
Speaker 1: of what things are like. And so I think that's

837
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 1: part of her motivation. But I think at the end

838
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 1: of the day, I still come down on there. I

839
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,880
Speaker 1: think that it is much more connected. I don't think

840
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: there's these kind of lawless lands between the patterns of laws.

841
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:09,839
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think I'm with you on that one. Well.

842
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: One of her examples that I found really interesting was

843
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:15,799
Speaker 1: thinking about how to apply physics in the real world. Right,

844
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: And so you take a coin, for example, and it drops,

845
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: and you can say, well, coin is mostly described by

846
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: F equals I may, it's mostly just dominated by gravity.

847
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 1: Is fairly simple situation, And I guess this is the

848
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: kind of thing she would say, is essentially screened off

849
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,000
Speaker 1: from the other details. But if instead of dropping a coin,

850
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:33,920
Speaker 1: you drop like a bank note and it's a windy day,

851
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:36,440
Speaker 1: then could you possibly ever describe the motion of that

852
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: bank note using ff equals I may it's like this

853
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 1: bit of wind, in that bit of wind, and the

854
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 1: other bit of wind, and in that situation, like you know,

855
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:45,879
Speaker 1: one might ask, is it just too complicated and it's

856
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: a lot of different sums, or is it really not

857
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: described by any physics at all? And I guess her

858
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:54,960
Speaker 1: point is you can't ever really tell, right, you know,

859
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:57,800
Speaker 1: in the absence of a model that yields accurate predictions,

860
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 1: we have no grounds for thinking that any particular law applies.

861
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: Is another quote from her book, And I guess I

862
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 1: find that useful as like a warning, like keep in mind,

863
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 1: you don't really know how to solve most of the

864
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:11,800
Speaker 1: situations in the world outside of your well controlled experiments.

865
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: But you know, we also have this history and physics

866
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: of success. You know, we build the transistors in the laboratory,

867
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: and then they fly airplanes that mostly don't crash right

868
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: out in the complicated world. And in the history of

869
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 1: physics we see this like unification, where electricity and magnetism

870
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 1: come together, we add the weak force. Maybe in the

871
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:32,720
Speaker 1: future we'll be able to combine that with the strong

872
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: force and gravity. It seems to me like argument of

873
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: history at least is against her. Is that the view

874
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 1: mostly in mainstream philosophy, or is there a camp of

875
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: people who are continuing this work. So there are a

876
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 1: camp of people that are continuing in the kind of

877
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:47,880
Speaker 1: car right line of thinking. I think you're completely right

878
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 1: to kind of characterize it as a kind of kind

879
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: of epistemic humility warning, you know, like you don't have

880
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:56,239
Speaker 1: a warrant to say that it's definitely gonna work. So

881
00:43:57,280 --> 00:43:59,960
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important part of the project

882
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:01,799
Speaker 1: xt And but then on the other hands, you kind

883
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 1: of a tone in the other direction, which is, well,

884
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 1: we've we've not yet found a situation where that doesn't

885
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,320
Speaker 1: you know, for for objects of the size of a banknote,

886
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: just summing up all the forces on it doesn't work

887
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 1: as a way of predicting what happens. Okay, maybe we

888
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: won't ever be able to do it in the case

889
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:20,239
Speaker 1: of the banknotes. It's just too complicate it. But I

890
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: guess that's that's the kind of warrant that we have,

891
00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:25,399
Speaker 1: kind of holding onto the idea that maybe we can't

892
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:28,799
Speaker 1: predict it, but it is like predictable in principle. Maybe

893
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 1: aliens with their supercomputers have totally solved that problem, all right.

894
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:34,359
Speaker 1: So then my last question for you is, aside from

895
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:37,960
Speaker 1: meeting aliens with super advanced answers to questions in physics

896
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,439
Speaker 1: and philosophy, what do you think are prospects from making

897
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:44,479
Speaker 1: progress on these questions. I mean, we can't ever really

898
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: understand how a banknote flutters in the wind. Are we

899
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 1: going to be able to figure out if there is

900
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,760
Speaker 1: a grand, unified theory out there for us to work towards,

901
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:55,759
Speaker 1: or if the universe is really just a patchwork. How

902
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: do we understand these things? Our philosopher is gonna be

903
00:44:58,160 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 1: arguing about this for a thousand years, or we actually

904
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 1: to figure this out. I guess we don't. I don't know, really,

905
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:04,959
Speaker 1: because I think that it comes back to like whether

906
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:08,280
Speaker 1: we think that even if it's going to be a patchwork,

907
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:11,400
Speaker 1: even if you know, sometimes people say it's kind of

908
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 1: turtles all the way down. You know, we could just

909
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:18,040
Speaker 1: keep smashing particles together and finding new particles forever and ever.

910
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:19,719
Speaker 1: You know, you make that sound like a bad thing,

911
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:23,239
Speaker 1: That sounds like job security for me. In that case,

912
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: then we would expect kind of you know, that there

913
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:27,320
Speaker 1: isn't a fundamental level. That would be a bit like

914
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:30,320
Speaker 1: saying perhaps I'm tempted to think that even if we

915
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:33,400
Speaker 1: that could be the case, or it could be a patchwork,

916
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:37,239
Speaker 1: we still the best methodology that we would have is

917
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: to keep looking for kind of more fundamental theories and

918
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 1: I think working out how everything kind of patches together,

919
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:47,480
Speaker 1: you know, is it going to be that we always

920
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: have a kind of effective theory that works within a

921
00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: certain domain, and then a more fundamental theory underlying that.

922
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 1: Um it would be really interest I mean, there's, particularly

923
00:45:57,920 --> 00:45:59,919
Speaker 1: for the case of things like black holes as fast

924
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: anating questions of how things will turn out. So I'm

925
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:05,560
Speaker 1: tempted to think whilst at the moment I placed my

926
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:07,839
Speaker 1: bets on it not being a patchwork in the sense

927
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,160
Speaker 1: of there's lawless kind of lands between the patches, will

928
00:46:11,200 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: be interesting to find out. Well. I like the way

929
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:16,760
Speaker 1: you describe the arc of science there were like discovering.

930
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 1: We're letting the universe tell us its story, and I

931
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: just hope that we're not too biased by the way

932
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 1: we're listening to the story, to the story we want

933
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 1: to hear that we are able to absorb, you know,

934
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 1: the shocking truth of the universe, because it sometimes takes us,

935
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: you know, decades or centuries to really come to grips

936
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:36,319
Speaker 1: with what the experiments are telling us. It's it's hard

937
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,000
Speaker 1: to deviate sometimes from sort of like the historical path

938
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: of science. And you know, I'm metor I can pronounce

939
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 1: that phrase epistemical humility. We should try to maintain that

940
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 1: as much as possible, but also make progress on the

941
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:49,759
Speaker 1: science at the same time. Well, thanks very much for

942
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,319
Speaker 1: joining us today on the podcast and for talking about

943
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 1: these really important but also very abstract questions about the

944
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: way we do science. Thanks for having me, Thanks everyone

945
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:08,400
Speaker 1: for listening. Tune in next time. Yeah, thanks for listening,

946
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is

947
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,719
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from

948
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:18,440
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

949
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yea