Are there any physical or chemical laws science doesn't know?

Great Debates
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To the protein folding question:

Translation (the making of protein from information encoded on mRNA) is poorly understood. As jmullaney’s previous post indicated, we know all of the forces involved in protein folding. These are van der Waals forces (hydrophobic interactions), ionic forces, and hydrogen bonding between the nascent polypeptide strand, the ribosome, the cellular ionic environment, the endoplasmic reticulum (for membranous proteins tranlated on the rough ER), and proteins involved in assisting folding (chaperones and so forth).

We have many problems like this in biology: Enhancer/promoter signals signalling transcription factors to tell when and where genes are turned on (what Spiritus was getting at), epigenetic regulation (methylation, histone acetylation in gene regulation) incredibly complex feedback loops in the most simple developmental processes, ecology/niche interactions and interspecies interactions, etc.

These are all systems with many, many variables and we have no way to reduce the number of variables in order to model them appropriately with current mathematical and computer techniques.

What we are left with is a situation akin to many problems with quantum theory – every particle interaction can be described by an infinite number of Feynmann diagrams, and we have no mathematical way to reduce or model these possible interactions.

All it means is we need better math. What we do in the mean time is we simplify, which sometimes doesn’t work. In biology, we predict protein homolgy by BLAST searching and run computer programs to predict motifs based on primary sequence homology. We have a catalog of motifs, for instance SH2 and peptidase and kinase regions, which give us hints at what proteins do. It takes honest-to-god research into the proteins to actually prove this. There are lots of examples of function predicted by homology being totally uninformative to the real-world job of a gene product, though.

To answer the OP, I agree with jmullaney on a number of points. There are few fundamental things going on that we don’t have a theory for. This is a bit of a skewed question though – the science community is large enough that theories for newly discovered anomalies in measurement are quickly cranked out. New particle seen at CERN? New additions to the Yang-Mills theory. Higher cosmic background? New interpretation of the Big Bang theory. The same happens in chemistry and biology as well. The scientific theories are based on observation, so we can’t say there is anything out there without a theory explaining it. Circular reasoning. It just takes a lot longer to find out which theories have predictive value.

So, to answer the OP:

  1. We still have no conceptual foundation of how gravity works on a quantum level. We have many theories, but many of them (for instance superstring) may only be corroborated by evidence produced during collisions at Planck energies, which is nowhere close to where we are nowadays.

  2. Next, the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics, alluded to above, is a pragmatic interpretation. It is accepted because it works. We are given a set of mathematical formulae that hold up to a high degree of accuracy in every experiment to date. But, the mathematical formulae tell us absolutely nothing about the particles, interactions, forces, or space/time. The equations work because they work. The actual physical properties which underlie the equations are a black box. This feeds into 1.

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Lemur866 wrote:

Sure we could solve it – just not in polynomial time. It’s one of them thar darned-old NP-complete problems.

One solution to working NP-complete algorithms is to have every PC user on the planet “donate” some of their down-time (as determined by a screensaver or some such) to number-crunch on one tiny subset of the complete problem. This is the idea behind “SETI@home” and that, um, that thingy that’s searching for a potential cure for leukemia.

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Speaking of which…

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That poor traveling salesman. I’ve spent way too many hours pondering that one. I think there is a solution to this mathematical problem which will be found eventually.

One of which, BTW, can be found here

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Thanks edwino, I’m glad somebody understood.

Again, this is an iterative and comparative process, not a generative one. The point, really, was to illustrate that an understanding of fundamental elements does not imply that all problems have been solved. Since jmullaney is using “we know everything” to decide that any question (such as consciousness) which has not been fully solved must be unsolveable using the elements we understand, the examples seemed pertinent.

jmullaney

Did I? Perhaps. I was responding too the last section of the OP: Unless anyone can sanely claim that the secret to human consciousness will be found when examining partical interactions at the start of the big bang or how matter works in a black hole – and none of the competeing theoretical explanations, one of which existing is likely valid, have such a postulate --science effectively understands the mundane universe for billions of cubed miles around without an explanation of consciousness. This passage both extends the conversation well beyond the basic formulations of chemistry and physics and implies that you feel any question not yet soluble to science must have its answer outside of science.

No. I am saying that we do not yet know all of the ways in which chemistry acts to transform a genetic sequence into a morhpogenic trait. If you accept pointing to it and saying “chemistry”, then I am not surprised that you find pointing to consciousness and saying “spirit” to be a satisfactory answer. Of course, with DNA we can be fairly certain that no other factor are involved. With consciousness, that is demonstrably not the case.

The interpretations for the predictive excellence of quantum mechanics are a subset of consciousness? Escellent. Then I point to consciousness and say “physics”. I trust you are satisfied now.

Hardly a complete treatment of the subject. If Feynman is correct, positrons represent particulate time travel, so Thorne’s black hole/singularity mechanism is not necessarily the only avenue to approach this question. More to the point, you seem to have been less than complete in summarizing Cecil’s viewpoint. He says: “Causality violation,” as it’s called, would totally kibosh our current understanding of how the universe works, and a lot of physicists hope desperately that it can be shown to be impossible. In other words, the question remains open. Reality has no obligation to conform to the hope of physicists.

Actually, differing theories for how gravity works do have consequences for how it behaves. Though, if you really like this line of reasoning I am willing to point to consciousness and say “psychology”. Satisfied?

Not necessarily (though I agree with that interpretation personally). Quantum mechanics descibes a Universe in which virtual particle materializations occur. It provides no explanatory mechanism. Thus, Occam would lead us to say “it has no cause beyond the structure of the Universe”. Similarly, neuropsychology describes a world in which consciousness exists. It supplies no explanatory mechanism. Are you satisfied to say, “it has no cause beyonf the structure of the brain.”?

I am saying that we do not as yet understand how the potential for learning language is realized. We are fairly certain that the capacity to learn language is genetically encoded, but we haven’t any idea how it is actualized. Much like consciousness, actually. If you accept “chemistry” for this, then you should likewise accept “chemistry” for consciousness.

No, I am pointing out that our inability to read Minoan, despite having a full understanding of the ways in which languages are encoded in symbol, is analagous to our inability to “read” the activities of the brain, despite our understanding of the chemistry under which neurotransmitters operate. Basically, I am trying to show you that jumping from our present lack of a full model of consciousness to the conclusion that consciousness must have a non-material cause is unjustified. Just as it would be unjustified to declare that Minoan script is not an expression of human language.

Wow – random chance and “accordance with known chemical laws”. Stop the search, abiogenesis is solved. You know what, consciousness exists in accordance with known chemical laws, too.

Hormone release? You think that autonomic functions are a subset of consciousness? Excellent. The autonomic breathing response in humans is triggered by one of two conditions: excess carbon dioxide in the blood or lack of oxygen in the blood. Both of these responses are controlled by neurolochemical processes. Thus, consciousness is a neurochemical process.

No. I am stating that we do not know the shape of the Universe. The options, BTW, are generally given as closed (convex), open (concave), or flat. Spherical would be the first. At present, we don’t know the answer, but current cosmological thinking places total mass within 10% of critical, so many folks argue “flat”.

Really? Science has demonstrated for a fact that determinism is dead on the macroscopic scale? I always miss the fun meetings. Would you mind sharing your notes?

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When I said science, I meant phyics and chemistry and their derivatives, what some call the natural sciences.

True enough. But we still have a set of laws to figure it out.

I mean, in so much as the observer collapses the state vector, the conscious observer is axiomatic to quantum mechanics.

Into the past, though?

It is difficult to prove a negative.

OK. Quantum gravity does appear to be an exception. The inverse square law does seem to be correct, but this remains to be seen.

I would say they are both axiomatic.

If I were a fundie, and we didn’t already have a thread on glosslalia … In the beginning was the Word?

But, scientifically, I’m not sure why language is a special case. But perhaps this is where the line I deliniate starts to get fuzzy.

But it is a question of composites. We don’t know the fundamentals of Minoan. We know the fundamentals of matter.

If there is no God, that is the only viable explanation.

Which ones?

You didn’t say “autonomic.” You said a decision was being made. I have never heard of such a thing, myself, but I presumed you knew what you were talking about. I didn’t realize you were talking about mere stimulus-repsonse which acts in accordance with known chemical laws. Atoms can’t make decisions.

I’m still not sure I understand the question. I go outside, and I can see the same distance in any direction. Hence, spherical.

If you are talking about the outcome of the universe, I covered that in the OP. The last news I heard was that it will keep expanding forever.

It is rather obvious. Simply because the randomness of invidual particles generally cancel each other out such that we can use determinism on large objects, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

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In fact, I seem to recall from my introduction to number theory book that there is no function whose only integer parts are prime numbers being proved, though I may be not remembering things correctly.

jmull
The pursuit of knowledge is nowhere near complete. This has been thoroughly discussed by other posters already, but you seem to dismiss it as “just chemistry” or “just particle interactions.” Are you just trolling? The ramifications of a small modeled theory are far greater than you seem to imply. Quantum theory has, as been noted, completely ignored gravity and yet we are pretty sure that gravity has a function in our universe.

I find it highly probable that we will never have a complete theory of everything. I don’t think it is possible to completely know the universe from within the universe, and since I also don’t think there is anywhere else to go, that means that we will never know everything.

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That is so painful I can’t even talk about it.

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:eek: Severe pain due to fallacious reasoning…

jm, you definately can’t conclude that from your observations. First of all (as my wife pointed out), you can’t see the southern sky, because the earth is in the way. Secondly, even if it weren’t in the way, you could only conclude that the universe is unbounded as far as you can see. Light energy dissipates at a rate that is inversely proportional to the distance from the source. It’s reasonable to say that the region of space that you can see is visible, but it’s unreasonable to say that the region of space that you can see is the only space that exists.

As far as the original question goes, it’s asking about the embedding of 3 dimensions inside a larger space. To simplify, a closed universe would mean (roughly) that if you started moving in a straight line, you’d eventually come back to where you started (like moving on the surface of the earth).

There is also the question of the expansion of the universe. It has been universally assumed for many years now that gravitation has been slowing down the rate of expansion of the universe. The question was then, will the universe [ul][li]slow down and collapse in a “Big Crunch”?[]slow down asymptotically?[]or inflate fast enough that gravity can’t slow it down until it has been dispersed to a point that matter can’t exist any more.[/ul][/li]Recently we found out that the assumption was wrong. It now appears that the inflation of the universe is accelerating. This has no known explanation. So this would definately qualify as something we don’t know.

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oops. Meant to say “It’s reasonable to say that the region of space that you can see is spherical.” Sorry for lapse.

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Quantum gravity is, of course, one big exception that disproves the rule. The Higgs particle is another - it’s in the Standard Model, and some of its properties are determined by the SM, but if found it could behave in totally unexpected ways and point to physics beyond the SM. We also don’t know the masses of the neutrinos, or whether they can convert into each other (though it looks right now like they do).

Small discrepancies in experimental data, or clashes between theories, can indicate the need for radical re-evaluation of the scientific model. For example, 13 seconds of arc per century in Mercury’s orbit indicates a problem in Newtonian gravity which is resolved in General Relativity - for which a new concept of space-time was necessary!

I think the OP is a tad bit overoptimistic.

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jmullaney

I have no idea why so many people are battling at this catch 22 you’ve hypothicized.

If we knew what physical or chemical laws were unknown, it would certainly make them much easier to discover, wouldn’t it?

You’ve been provided with numerous solid examples and quotes from people respected enough in their areas of physics and chemistry to have received Nobel Prizes, as well as the wonderful example of the fact we’re still awarding the Nobel prizes.

Can you please illustrate (understanding it would have to be a ficticious example) what sort of statement you would accept as consituting proof that you’re wrong?

I personally doubt that you can come up with one, because you have closed your mind on the subject and cannot imagine such a thing.

The only possible thing I can think of would be to hit the scientific journals since you first posted this stance and see what “laws of physics or chemistry that science” has discovered since.

It happens every day. Of course i’m sure any number of these don’t qualify by your internal definition of “law” which you haven’t specified yet.

-Doug

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I think I have to agree with dublos on this. Knowing that there is a problem to be solved is half the solution. It’s the things you never expected that sneak up and suddenly set you eye-to-eye with your ignorance. And that sort of Unknown we can’t state because – well – we don’t know it. Visualize Physics 100 years ago, just before the discoveries of X-Rays and Radioactivity set us on the road to the Quantum, or mathematics 50 years ago before Chaos began to rear its head. Before Feigenbaum calculated his famous Number who knew it existed? Who even had an inkling that such a process as frequency splitting even made its existence possible?

IIRC, there were articles in 19th century journals about the approaching End of Knowledge, when we would have learned everything, and were only measuring out to greater numbers of decimal places. The problem is that the authors literally didn’t know what they didn’t know.

A corollary: The new areas of knowledge were opened up by new technology – particle accelerators and radioactive sources in the search for the quantum, computers and their capability to do enormous amounts of tedious number crunching in the case of Chaos. We live in what I call the “Bubble of Understanding”, limited by our ability to see and measure in time, space, speed, etc. If you want to know where new knowledge comes from, look at the edges of that envelope. It is not clear to me that we have seen the largest or furthest structures, the highest-energy interactions (smallest structure), the fastest phenomena (between the festest particles we’ve generated and lightspeed). There exists the possibility for surprises anywhere we haven’t walked yet. DOES the “island of stability” exist for superheavy elements? Damned if I know.

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Particle physics is a little more uncertain than you seem to believe.
For instance the entire theory is postulated on

However the interactions required to change the behavour from case (a) to case (b) is not yet fully understood yet alone the mechanism by which this collapse occurs.

I would also point out that while our current theories give a good prediction of future behaviour. So did the Aristotelian model of planetary motion. That was until Copernicus came along with a much simpler, much more consistent theory.
Science is founded on the principle that you can never ‘know’ anything. The best you can do is approximate as closely as possible.

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Britt wrote:

<nitpick>

The geocentric model used to predict the positions of the planets, with its epicycles and equants, was invented by Ptolemy, not Aristotle. (Aristotle would have had a heart attack at the notion of planets moving in epicycles within their perfectly hard shells of crystalline ether.)

Copernicus’s model for planetary motion was no less complicated that Ptolemy’s. (Although it eliminated the need for an equant, it required epicycles on top of epicycles. Yeesh.) Furthermore, Copernicus’s model was no more accurate, on the whole, in predicting the positions of the planets at future dates, than Ptolemy’s was.

It wasn’t until Kepler came along and introduced non-uniform elliptical motion that our ability to predict where a planet would be made any significant improvement.

</nitpick>

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There are a couple of points that I think are relevant here that haven’t been mentioned explicitly, although many of the posts above give examples.

The first is the idea of “emergent properties”, features that don’t obviously follow from the basic rules of a simple system. As the system gets more complex, we often get unexpected behaviour. For example, we can talk all we like about algebra, but that doesn’t suggest that when we iterate a calculation we can get chaos.

A related idea is that of an “appropriate level of description”. Certainly biology could in principle be described in terms of basic chemistry and physics, but any such description would have to be so complex as to be essentially useless. It makes much more sense in many circumstances to set aside those basics, and think instead about higher-level things like growth and reproductive strategies.

To go back to the OP, consciousness seems (pretty certainly) to come out of a brain, which does run on chemical reactions, but claiming we can understand it at that level makes no sense at all.

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The Shame oh the shame, it was a very early morning post.
I am sure I had written Keppler not Copernicus. Although I must admit I always thought of all geocentric models as being modifications to the fundamental system Aristotle set out, thanks for the clarification (not to mention the correction to the complete blunder)

Britt

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The Shame oh the shame, it was a very early morning post.
I am sure I had written Keppler not Copernicus. Although I must admit I always thought of all geocentric models as being modifications to the fundamental system Aristotle set out, thanks for the clarification (not to mention the correction to the complete blunder)

Britt

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Britt wrote:

I was tempted, also, to mention the stillborn model of the solar system promoted by Tycho Brahe. He believed that the sun went around the Earth (i.e. we lived in a geocentrtic universe), but all the other planets went around the sun.

Incidentally, this “Tychonian” model of the solar system is the favorite model of modern geocentrists (most of whom believe in an Earth-centered universe for biblical reasons, e.g. http://www.biblicalastronomer.org/aba/).

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I never said it was. What I postulated, with a few exceptions, is that science has uncovered all laws which govern the material universe. I never intended to imply all the implications of those laws have been worked out.

I obliquely asked for examples of phenomena which science can’t explain with current laws. Some examples have been lacking.

Theorists haven’t worried alot about gravity because on the quantum scale it is comparatively weak along side the other forces. It isn’t fair to say they have ignored it, although I myself never studied it beyond the knowledge that some particles have mass and hence gravity and some don’t, and at least on the large scale, massive objects obey the inverse square law of gravitational attraction.

Re: the shape of the universe

and

Well, that wheel-chair guy, not to mention that one guy with the bad hair cut and the german accent (last seen doing pepsi commercials) agree with me.

This is part and parcel of the big bang theory. When you look into space, you are looking back into time. Since, accoring to the big bang theory, there is an exact moment in time when space/time came into existence (it sounds odd, but follow me on this one) no matter what direction you look into space, if you could see far enough you’d see back to that point. Curvature of space issues cancel each other out along the way. Evidence of this is shown by the isotropic nature of the cosmic background radiation.

It spreads out, but I’m fairly sure photons themselves don’t decay. I might be wrong.

Since you can’t travel faster than the speed of light, you wouldn’t unless the universe is collapsing. I made an exception for that unknown case in the OP. Technically, you don’t move at all anyway – the rest of the universe moves relative to you and you always remain in the exact center.

Re: Outcome of the Unverse

Well, I don’t have a cite for this, but I heard on the radio on Saturday (on “Wait, Wait – Don’t Tell Me” on NPR) that NASA figured this out last week. Essentially, there are a lot more black holes than previously thought, or something. Ones near the edge of the universe are pulling the rest of the universe towards them, causing the acceleration. Did anyone else run across this story?

Re: Quantum gravity

I did try to cover the neutrino and, by extension, the Higgs particle in the OP. Still, if the Higgs particle doesn’t obey the standard model, I’d expect there to be some unexplained phenomena which resulted from this apart from the behavior of the particle itself.

Re: 19th century though they had all the answers too:

That is the flaw in CalMeachem’s point – science at the end of last century did know they didn’t know the reasons for the perihelion of the planet Mercury.

But he makes a good point about superheavies. That still doesn’t point to an actual unexplained phenomenon.

Re: Badges?? We don’t need not stinkin’ badges!
(or: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the Law!)

It would help to have some phenomenon which were unexplained by which one could discover such laws.

Other than quantum gravity which I admit to knowing nothing about, they haven’t come up with much. I’m still unsure exactly what phenomena aren’t explained by quantum theory, although IIRC the way the Higgs particle effects objects of different “spins” might be an exception of a rule which covers most other particles.

Under conditions X, Y occurs or does not occur, and there is no law governing why or why not, or the why or why not is an exception to current laws – aside from the exceptions I gave in the OP. Of course there are some fundamental forces for which we await the Grand Unified Theory to completely link together – but the fundamental forces themselves obey known laws anyway.

Next time, let’s bet on it.

Law? You know, E=MC[sup]2[/sup], that sort of thing. I’d be surprised if someone discovered a new law which governs the universe and no one outside of those circles would hear about it. I’d be really surprised if dublos’s lurking Nobel Prize winners-in-waiting hadn’t heard anything either.

Re: chaos theory

True, but the unexpected behavior never violates the basic rules.

Conclusion:

Yes, but we are left with the following possible conclusions:

  1. All atoms are in some minimal way “conscious”, hence a collection of them can be conscious. This seems to violate Ockham’s razor as we have no evidence of atoms acting in a conscious fashion outside of the brain.
  2. There is a principal, beyond matter, at play.
  3. Consciousness is caused by the Higgs particle and/or quantum gravitation, and I shouldn’t cavelierly dismiss such a possibility?
  4. Humans aren’t conscious.

#4 is possible, but if so all I’d really need to do is bombard my opponents with just the right data stream and they’d have no choice but to come around to my theoretically mistaken point of view that humans are actually conscious. So, I get a victory, Pyrrhic or not, either way. :smiley: