"Random Reality"
Marcus Chown tackles a daunting and complex emerging theory in his article "Random Reality." (2000). The basic thrust of the article is to posit a cutting-edge theory forwarded by "Reginald Cahill and Christopher Klinger of Flinders University" (Chown, 24), which basically asserts that "space and time and all the objects around us are no more than the froth on a deep sea of randomness" (Chown, 24). While such a theory may sound far-fetched to those who are unacquainted with quantum physics and Einstein's relativity theories, for those who are well-versed in standard concepts of physics such as the Uncertainty Principle and Relativity, it is not so much the shocking aspect of Cahill and Klinger's thesis which causes trepidation but the sparse phenomenological evidence which is used to verify or reinforce the theorists' sweeping claims. Chown's article is skillfully articulated. He builds a careful, quite linear historically-based support for the presentation of Cahill and Klinger's theory, first by citing the research of "the Austrian-born logician Kurt Godel" who, in forwarded a shocking theory of his own "with the publication of his incompleteness theorem" (Chown, 25) which posited the idea that " most mathematical truths can never be proved" (Chown, 25). Although the theory was widely ignored by physicists, but later, "in the 1980s, Gregory Chaitin of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, extended Godel's work" (Chown, 25) and applied it to studies of deep-reality.
In essence, because Chaitin believed Godel to be correct in assuming that "unprovable truths" are a certainty, he applied the concept to physics and determined that rather than calling truths, unprovable, he would call them "random." The theory of "random truths" meant that "a vast ocean of such truths surrounds the island of provable theorems. Any one of them might be stumbled on by accident (an equation might be accidentally discovered to have some property that cannot be derived from the axioms) but none of them can be proved." (Chown, 25) From this point on, Chown's article begins to weaken as he grasps for ways in which to illustrate the increasingly complex and "grandiose" suggestions forwarded by the "random truths" theory, proper. Although Chown struggles to explain the theory both in simple language and by analogy, his task is strongly hampered by the absence of solid, experimental data on behalf of the random-truth theorists themselves.
While Cahill and Klinger have ostensibly determined that reality is, in fact, made out of "psuedo-objects" and that "trees" of probability emerge out of completely randomized generations of these "psuedo-objects," which eventually are perceived by us, as conscious creatures as "real," there is an absolute lack of experimental of phenomenological evidence in their theories as it is presented by Chown. One assumes that, since Chown offered a comprehensive and very eloquently written summary of the historical theories which generated the underpinnings of Cahill and Klinger's theory, one also assumes that if experimental or phenomenological evidence was available in connection with the Cahill-Klinger theory, that Chown would certainly offer it in his article.
In fact, what Chown does offer on behalf of the Cahill-Klinger theory is the following comment by Cahill "pseudo-objects must become hidden from view" whenever "reality" is being observed and so there is what quantum physicists call a wave-form collapse which precludes direct observation of the probability tress which the theorists refer to as "gebits" (Chown, 26). Ironically, it is the very verification of these "gebits' which Chown asserts will be the final proof needed to establish the veracity of the Cahill-Klinger hypothesis: "Cahill and Klinger hope to find that everything, matter and the laws of physics emerges spontaneously from the interlinking of gebits. Then we would know for sure that reality is based on randomness" (Chown, 27-28). It is precisely this sort of "jumping to radical conclusions" that seems to drive both Chown's article and the theory of "genits" and "random reality" itself.
Although Cahill and Klinger have offered a single observable phenomenon: "self-organised criticality" to demonstrate the physical expression of their theory, the evidence involving the behavior of particles in a sand-pile is not very convincing, certainly not convincing in the same way that the "two-slit" experiment helped to confirm the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics. The concepts which are presented by Cahill and Klinger are fascinating and they are certainly more than ably and energetically presented by Chown in his article; however, Chown's "concession to the opposition" is quite slight and -- even as such -- ultimately deflating to the very theory he is trying to assert. As "Roy Frieden of the University of Arizona" pointed out, in helping to posit Chown's concession to the opposition in the article, ""It would be much more convincing if Cahill and Klinger could show something physical that is, some physical law emerging from this," and Frieden also reminds us that in the case of Einstein, observable space-time confirmed his equations. In other words, if Cahill and Klinger's theory "is to be a model of space," we would require "something like Einstein's equation for local space curvatures" (Chown, 27). In the absence of such "concrete" evidence, Cahill and Klinger's theories no matter how provocative are likely to play little role in the expanding frontiers of physics.
Work Cited
Chown, Marcus. "Random Reality". New Scientist, February 26, No.2227 pp 24-28, 2000.
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