Hi there,
… it’s commonly called the “God Particle” as it gives matter its mass.
…does it rather provide some scientific “proof” of the existence of God?
No, I cannot see it providing any new material for proving the existence of God.
However, it does seem to provide possible material for re-affirming the principles of “classical Physics” (i.e. the First/Natural Philosophy of Aristotle as transformed by Aquinas and the Scholastic philosophers/theologians) which still strongly lies behind traditional Catholic theology.
This Church philosophy is no longer readily understandable to scientific “modern man” (that means all of us). Even if you wouldn’t consider yourself the engineering/scientific type your assumptions about the world are still seriously influenced by Descartes and Newton who basically invented “Science” and its principles. In doing so they expressly rejected and repudiated Church philosophy (as well as ancient “Natural Philosophy” which was factually wrong in many areas) of their day re the world, its structure and causative principles (e.g. “hylomorphism” which is still used in theology today to explain the relationship of soul and body).
It is strange (or maybe not) that Newtonian science has been so successful that the very phrase “classical Physics” refers to Newton rather than Aristotle (things “classical” normally refer to Greek thinking). What is “modern Physics” you ask? Its Quantum mechanics etc of course - it has clearly superceded Newton who was close (but only half a cigar).
Descarte and Newton poo-poo-ed scholastic understanding of “matter” and “substance.”
For scholastics “matter” did not exist in itself. Only “substances” existed in themselves.
And existing “substances” could be either corporeal (aether?, mineral, plant, animal, human) or immaterial (angel, God).
Descartes threw all this out and basically said that all corporeal substance is composed of self-existing matter which has extension (3 dimensions) and “mass” and various other qualities/properties (actually Newton invented “mass” but this is a minor point). He maintained there are no gaps between these material substances. Nature abhors such gaps (“vacuums”) and exherts a force to stop this happening. He was later shown to be not quite right on this point I believe (Torecelli). Light and the forces of gravity/magentism travelled through very fine matter and thus effectively “poked” distant things as if by means of an ethereal “stick” (true mechanism).
Scholastics were horrified. For them “matter” (or more correctly “prime matter”) was a component principle of corporeal substance (the other component was “form”). And these are not component
parts, but component
principles of existing things. (e.g. a statue of “David” … matter cannot exist without a shape (form) - and shape (form) cannot be instantiated or even imagined without shaping something (matter)). Modern scholastics even maintain that the simplist of corporeal substances (aether) can “exist” without mass or extension.
Simple but deep. And totally rejected by classic science…until now?
Actually this does not seem to be quite true.
Since the time of Newton there have been difficulties explaining the transmission/influence of light and static magnetic/gravitational forces through what, mechanists cannot now deny, is apparantly space devoid of continuous matter.
Actually that is, again, maybe not quite true.
Post Newtonian theory did seem to resurrect this old scholastic philosophy by positing the “ether” to explain these problems. It is poopoo-ed today because of pragmatic success with Einstein’s theories and calculations and his alternative model of curved-space time (which is probably just as hard to get ones head around as the nature of the ether). The ether’s demise was further inevitable because it proved very difficult to experimentally prove its “existence” (despite an ingenious attempt in 1887 by Michelson-Morley).
Now I do not pretend to understand the Higgs Boson particle. However its existence apparantly also validates the existence of the “Higgs Field” that permeates the whole unvierse. Such a field seems to imply the existence of a very simple corporeal substance (without the properties of either mass/momentum or extension) … which nevertheless enables other more complex mineral substances to possess mass and extension. Sounds like aether to me. Even “energy” has momentum (which is why I ignore “energy” in this discussion as it is is covered by the usual definition of “matter”). But aether is simpler still.
This sounds to me like Descarte’s separation of existence and non-existence on the basis of materiality (i.e. having mass/extension) has been breached. We now have a “material” without extension/mass/momentum that nevertheless exists.
This doesn’t seem to fit the mechanistic universe of Descarte/Netwon at all.
Even the matter/energy universe of “conventionally received Einstein” may be challenged by this a little also. (It is interesting that Einstein rejected the need for the “ether” when he first came up with his theory of relativity…yet later in life was convinced it (in a slightly different “form”) was still necessary. His followers didn’t take this path).
So the long and short of my long ramble is: because of the Higgs Field science may be coming back a little to a metaphysics of “matter” still held by Catholic Church philosophy but which was rejected by Science around the late 1600s.
Then again I may be completely mistaken in my science understanding above!
The following links may prove helpful (or not):
science20.com/alpha_meme/higgs_discovery_rehabilitating_despised_einstein_ether-85497
redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V08NO3PDF/V08N3GRF.PDF
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
mu6.com/einstein.html
