Abstract: In this article I recommend that substantivalism change its focus from what it has been traditionally—a thinly veiled effort to explain the current standard models of physics—and instead embrace the proper focus of philosophy—explaining reality itself. Exploiting that new perspective, I define a rigorous and testable model of spacetime as a substance, and propose […]
Cosmology
Reframing the Substantivalism Debate
Abstract: This paper highlights and examines a critical assumption embedded within the framework of the substantivalism/relationalism debate. This assumption is the unacknowledged priority given to the traditional properties of spacetime-as-coordinate-system that have been handed down over the course of the twentieth century. In this paper, I attempt to substantiate my claim that such an unreflective […]
Toward a Definition of the First Principle
Our Abyss Customarily, we think of a crisis as a period of limited duration, an obstacle heroically overcome, “bad times” endured with poise and tenacity and then recalled with pride. Man is a hopeful creature, constitutionally bound to imagine, even in the face of imminent death, that salvation is always near at hand. The oxymoronic […]
What Does a Proton Look Like?
What does a proton look like? The simple answer: Don’t ask. As with other subatomic particles, a proton is thought to be a complex of quantum wave functions—one for each of its quarks—distributed probabilistically through space. There is no “physical thing,” understood in realistic, everyday terms to which one could point and say, “There’s a […]
The Substance of Spacetime, New book by Andrew M. Ryan
The Substance of Spacetime: Infinity, Nothingness, and the Nature of Matter by Andrew M. Ryan is the second edition of Ryan’s work of theoretical physics and is now available where books are sold. This iteration of the book has been fully revised with a completely new final chapter that considers several of the current puzzles […]