Eight amazing things physics has taught us

What are the most amazing things that we know about the physics of the universe? If you were to pick ten what would they be?

I recently read Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality (2021) a popular science book by Frank Wilczek. My interest in the book was piqued just to see what Wilczek's choices for his "ten" were. I got a copy from the public library and became entranced because I discovered what a gifted writer and expositor Wilczek is. I found I was learning some physics I did not know; or at least getting a deeper understanding of what I should know. I then bought my own copy so I could annotate it. I have previously enjoyed the insights in many of Wilczeks' Physics Today columns.

The book gives a popular presentation of some physics "basics" such as celestial mechanics, the Standard Model of elementary particles (which he renames the Core), and Big Bang cosmology.  I found it full of insights. I also appreciated that Wilczek does not have the hard reductionist or scientism edge found in the popular books of some distinguished theoretical physicists such as Weinberg and Hawking. However, a careful reading led me at times to be somewhat disappointed and irritated, for reasons that I discuss briefly below. In the end, this is because, not surprisingly, I have a much more emergentist perspective on reality, seeing it as stratified.

First, here are the ten things that Wilczek finds amazing, helpfully summarised in his chapter titles.

Part I. What There Is 

Chapter 1. There's Plenty of Space

Chapter 2. There's Plenty of Time

Chapter 3. There Are Very Few Ingredients

Chapter 4. There Are Very Few Laws

Chapter 5. There's Plenty of Matter and Energy

Part II. Beginnings and Ends 

Chapter 6. Cosmic History is an Open Book

Chapter 7. Complexity Emerges

Chapter 8. There's Plenty More to See

Chapter 9. Mysteries Remain

Chapter 10. Complementarity Is Mind-Expanding

Here are some of the ideas associated with each of the ten keys.

There's Plenty of Space

The scales of the universe are incredible. Beyond us, there is the vast numbers of stars and galaxies, and distances of more than ten billion light years. Within us, each of our bodies contains more atoms than there are stars in the universe. Our brains have as many neurons as there are stars in our galaxy. An atom is largely empty space.

There's Plenty of Time

Cosmic time is abundant. The quantity of time reaching back to the big bang dwarfs a human lifetime... [which] contains far more moments of consciousness than universal history contains human life spans. We are gifted with an abundance of inner time.

There Are Very Few Ingredients

Everything in the universe is made of just a few particles: leptons, quarks, and neutrinos. And forces and the associated bosons, such as photons, gravitons, and gluons. These particles have just a few properties: mass, charge, colour, and spin.

 "The most basic ingredients of physical reality are a few principles and properties. Four simple yet profound general principles govern how the world works.

1. The basic laws describe change.

2. The basic laws are universal.

3. The basic laws are local.

4. The basic laws are precise.

Newton realised locality was a problem. Fields rather than particles are the fundamenta building blocks of matter.

Quasiparticles are discussed. In high school, Wilczek was inspired by a visit to Bell Labs where he learnt that quanta of lattice vibrations are phonons. He describes how he introduced anyons in the early 1980s and how they were then identified with quasiparticles in fractional quantum Hall states.

There Are Very Few Laws

From forces we are led to fields, and from (quantum) fields, we are led to particles.

From particles we are led to (quantum) fields, and from fields, we are led to forces.

Thus, we come to understand that substance and force are two aspects of a common underlying reality.

The four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear) are described by just a few simple mathematical equations.

The art and science of spectroscopy is described as "Atoms sing songs that bare their souls, in light."

Wilczek's Ph.D. work on quark confinement and asymptotic freedom in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) was the beginning of QCD being accepted and used.

Newton's gravity theory presented the puzzle of the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. Einstein's gravity solved the puzzle and "fulfills Newton's aspiration for a theory of gravity based n local action". 

    "we can portray the majestic logic of general relativity in ten broad             strokes... "

    "John Wheeler, the poet of relativity, summed it up this way: "Space-time     tells matter how to move; matter tells space-time how to bend."

Wilczek makes the debatable and misleading claim that "The equations of QED, QCD, general relativity, and the weak force, ... have powered many advances, including lasers, transistors, nuclear reactors, MRIs, and GPS."

There's Plenty of Matter and Energy

The fact that the amount of solar energy falling on the surface of the earth is vastly greater than current human energy consumption.

The concept of "dynamical complexity" is introduced but not defined. "Music and ritual are purified expressions of dynamical complexity."

"The principle that the essence of human purposes is experienced through flows of information in dynamic complexity, rather than through details of chemistry and physiology, is both mind-expanding and liberating. It challenges us to imagine how minds could emerge elsewhere in the universe, and it prepares us to embrace those minds within our circle of empathy."

To me, this is "mumbo jumbo" and reflects the muddled thinking that occurs when Wilczek wildly extrapolates from "fundamental" physics to broader and deeper questions about humanity. The last chapter has similar weaknesses.

Cosmic History is an Open Book

A lucid short summary is presented of big bang cosmology. What we know and why we know it. The chapter ends with a brief reference to Augustine's prescient insights about time. It is what clocks measure and so time did not exist before the beginning of the universe.

Complexity Emerges

How did the featureless simple "soup" that existed a million years after the big bang develop into the complex universe seen today with structures such as stars, galaxies, planets, and biological life? This short chapter (only eight pages) mostly talks about the role of gravity. The chapter could have been much richer by discussing the emergence of complexity in biology, psychology, and sociology. Again, simple laws can produce complex properties.

There's Plenty More to See

The discovery of the Higgs particle and gravitational wave astronomy are both described. Some speculations are made to connect "Quantum Perception and Self-Perception."

Mysteries Remain

What triggered the big bang? Could it hapen again?

Are there meaningful patterns hidden in the apparent sprawl of fundamental particles and forces?

How, concretely, does min emerge from matter? (Or does it?)

Wilczek describes violation of time reversal invariance (T) in elementary particle physics and the Peccei-Quinn proposal for a new field to explain this. The corresponding particle was dubbed the axion by Wilczek, which fulfilled his high school dream to give a particle that name when he encountered a laundry detergent with that name. The axion "cleans up a problem" in elementary particle physics.

Axions are candidates for dark matter.

Complementarity Is Mind-Expanding

Bohr's concept of complementarity (embodied in wave-particle duality in quantum theory) is embraced. 

Complementarity is the concept that one single thing, when considered from different perspectives, can seem to have very different or even contradictory properties. Complementarity is an attitude toward experiences and problems that Ive found eye-opening an extremely helpful. It has literally changed my mind. Through it, I've become larger: more open to imagination, and more tolerant.

I am no fan of this perspective. I am all for having an open mind, considering a range of perspectives, and living with dialectic (intellectual tensions). However, I do not use quantum theory to justify that. There is a multitude of moral, philosophical, social, and political reasons that provide much more compelling justifications for humility. Bohr's perspective and extrapolations from the atomic world to politics has a long and dubious history that has systematically been debunked by Mara Beller, including in Physics Today.  Nevertheless, these ideas just won't go away, as seen why a recent volume of papers on Quantizing International Relations.

In summary, I love Wilczek's discussions of physics, and I think eight of the ten chapters describe amazing things about the physical world that we have learnt and should contemplate with awe and wonder.  But, two of the chapters make speculations about how the type of theoretical physics that Wilczek has made seminal contributions to is profoundly relevant to technological, social, economic, and political reality. I would much rather draw on the insights and debates from the humanities and social sciences to understand those realities and our place in them.