There may be controversy in the what’s happening and how is it happening. However, Fixed_Gauge’s last sentence in post #16, indicates that there is no controversy regarding the unchanging nature of the substance in which these fluctuations are occurring.
It would also apply to our bodies: we are getting older day after day, but at the same time we are always new, right?
Still, doesn’t seem strange to you that we get old? Is it because our soul becomes old as well?
Does that explain why our bodies look older and older even though their atoms are renewed?
The physical body always change but soul is same. By Islamic knowledge soul(spirit) is a law of God just like other physical laws. Physical laws do not change but they make things changed. Soul as a law is different from other laws that soul also has a body which does not consist of physical materials or subatomic particles. For instance Gravity is a fixed law which not change by time. Soul is a law but also that law has life, seeing, hearing, mind, senses etc.
You started talking of atomic particles which are continuously annihilated and replaced by new ones. If we were able to see them, and there where two atomic particles of the same element in front of us, we would be able to say “there is one particle here and one there; so, there are two of them, and this one is not that one”. If I presented one of those particles to you at a given moment, and then I presented the other to you at a moment later, you would not be able to say if it really is “another” or not. In the same manner, if you were able to see the particle that dissapears and then “the other” that appears instead of “the first one”, you would not be able to say if it really is “another”.
When something is not “fixed in reality” it is never the same thing that it was though
If because it is continuously changing something is never the same thing, then what do words mean? For example, what do you mean when you say “dog”?
Hume? In such an evanescent “reality”, who is “it”?
I don’t think so. That dubious “something” called “Hume” was a phenomenalist which included the “I” among the set of phenomena. If there was any “truth” in its writings, then, as a set of phenomena, it was self refuting. There was no “Hume”, but just a succession of disjointed phenomena nested within other phenomena.
You should post more often!Hello thinkandmull. I am currently studying for a PhD in particle theory, so I think I can help you out.
A lot of people have the idea that QM is a magical idea that makes nature unknowable. That technically isn’t true; at the fundamental level, QM is a very thinly disguised theory of linear algebra. Particles have wave-like properties, but fundamentally, they are governed by algebraic properties that restrict their structure to a few configurations, known as eigenfunctions. The uncertainty between position and momentum certainly exists, but they are simply the result of the inability of the position and momentum matrices to be simultaneously diagonalized. What this means is that certain values of these particles cannot be measured with 100% certainty at the same time, but we can know how these particles act on a macroscopic scale.
As for your point about particles appearing and disappearing at will, this is a facet of the theory of quantum fields, or QFT. QFT is quite a bit more complicated than quantum mechanics, so I won’t go into it here; basically, the particles that disappear and reappear are called “virtual” particles, and aren’t really what we consider particles at all. They are merely (in some interpretations) mathematical crutches that arise from the difficulty in solving the equations of motion of particles in this quantum field. Think of them like ripples in the quantum field. However, their behavior is well understood and there is nothing unknown about why they are there.
I’m glad you are thinking about the philosophical implications of QM (many physicists don’t even want to think about them) But there is no conflict between QM and Catholic spirituality. Relics may be filled with virtual particles which have fundamental uncertainty, but the essence of the Relics is there all the same
I have a personal experience of the reality of myself; my permanence or my evanescence…, Why should I resort on what Hume or another have to say about this specific subject, if it is the case that they have something to say?