One Mind vs Many Minds in Physics

Elimination of the One Mind of Louis XVI witnessed by Many Minds: Birth of modernity.

In Dr Faustus of Modern Physics I describe how modern physics was born in the early 20th century from a deal with the Devil replacing the fundamental principles of classical physics of

• objective reality of space and time
• cause-effect: determinism: causality
• logical consistency

by the new fundamental principles of modern physics of

• relativity: subjective reality of space and time under universal invariance
• statistics: atomistic games of roulette
• duality: both wave and particle at the same time.

The deal was motivated by the following problems which appeared impossible to solve using classical continuum physics and asked for solution to maintain scientific credibility:

• 2nd law of thermodynamics (irreversibility in formally reversible systems)
• observer independent speed of light (Michelson-Morley experiment)
• blackbody radiation (ultraviolet catastrophy)
• photoelectric effect (inexplicable frequency dependence).

In Dr Faustus of Modern Physics I open a door to different resolutions of these pressing problems with less severe side effects than the relativity-statistics-duality of modern physics. I describe this new approach as

• many-minds physics: many actors/observers: many gods: no master,

as opposed to

• one-mind physics: one universal actor/observer: one God: one master,

which is the current paradigm of modern physics as a combination of

• Einstein's relativity theory based on universal invariance
• quantum mechanics based on Schrödinger's multidimensional wave equation.

I present many-minds physics in the books

• Many-Minds Relativity
• Many-Minds Quantum Mechanics.

The basic difference between many-minds and one-mind physics can be understood as the difference between bottom-up and top-down control of a system, in political terms as the difference between democracy and autocracy/dictatorship, or between market economy and

socialistic economy.

In many-minds relativity each observer is tied to his coordinate system and the pertinent question concerns what agreement of observations by different observers is possible, without asking for universal agreement.

In many-minds quantum mechanics each electron/particle solves its own version of the Schrödinger equation and the multidimensional wave function asking for universal agreement does not appear.

In Computational Thermodynamics and Mathematical Physics of Blackbody Radiation I show that finite precision computation can replace atomistic games of roulette as explanation of irreversibility in formally reversible systems and the 2nd law with its direction of time.

Altogether I propose different resolutions of the problems which once troubled physics, resolutions which do not require basic principles of rationality and enlightenment to be abandoned. In many-minds physics, each actor/observer uses an individual classical perspective without any need of universality, like individual actors in a market economy.

PS Any similarity in the above picture with KTH-gate, is purely coincidental.