From Solids to Events: Condensed Matter Physics and Whitehead’s Philosophy

From Solids to Events

Condensed Matter Physics and Whitehead’s Philosophy

Solid Matter as Default
Many people ordinarily think of the material world as consisting of solid bodies in space, with measurable properties and distinct shapes, moving through time and colliding with one another. Billiard balls provide an example. People assume further that molecules, atoms, and subatomic happenings are solid-like. They are "particulars," and particulars are then imagined on the analogy of objects with clearly defined surfaces distinguishing them from others.
Liquids and Gases
Along the the way they - we - often forget that matter also assumes the form of liquids and gases, which are also part of the material world. Gases and liquids are not as easily defined in terms of distinct shapes; they have a more field-like character. Thus, the material world consists, at the very least, of water, air, and fire. Hence the idea, common in ancient western philosophy, that the physical world consists of earth, air, fire, and water.
Expanded Understanding Through Condensed Matter Physics
In our time, condensed matter physics expands the notion of states of matter far beyond solids, liquids, and gases to include many other states, such as liquid crystals, magnets, glass, and superconductors. Their properties are not reducible to earth, air, fire or water. There are many states and phases of matter and more states of matter are being discovered.
Whitehead's Event-Based Approach to Matter
Whitehead's philosophy proposes that these many forms of matter are best understood not on the analogy solid objects (e.g., miniature particles) or even on that of gases and water, but as energy events, with all material objects being either events themselves or aggregate expressions of such events. An event is a happening. a moment.
Events as Inter-Related
From Whitehead's perspective no energy event is an island. Events are relational by nature, internally connected to one another in ways that physicists can discern. These relationships sometimes involve transitions between energetic states, highlighting the dynamic and interconnected character of materiality.
Events as Alive with Feeling and Creativity
Whitehead adds that energy is closely connected to feeling and that transfers of energy between energy events are also transfers of feeling. Moreover, for him moments of experience contain an element of creativity or spontaneity, reflecting the dynamic nature of existence. The history of energy in our universe is a history of feeling and creativity.
A More Vibrant Materiality?
A key question for our time is whether and how people might perceive matter in this way—such that matter itself is felt as vibrant, dynamic, and alive with energy. This would give rise a more "enchanted" or organic view of the physical world.
Rethinking Solid Matter as a Starting Point
For most of us, the process of moving into these other ways of perceiving begins with rethinking solid matter itself—not as the default or fundamental state of materiality, but as one among many forms and as an aggregate expression of vital, vibrant energy.
The Role of Contemporary Physics in Rethinking Matter
Contemporary condensed matter physics, when combined with quantum theory, can assist in this rethinking of solid matter, helping to reveal its dynamic and energetic nature. Physics need not enter into the more speculative discussions above, but it is immensely helpful in rethinking the measurable forms.

A Role for Art and Spirituality

Art, Poetry, and Music as Windows into Vibrant Materiality
Perceiving the material world as vibrant goes beyond physics. It may best be evoked by the arts. Images from art, which portray matter as living and vibrant, can complement the scientific understandings of the many states of matter explored in condensed matter physics. Whitehead himself turned to romantic poetry to understand the spiritual, living side of nature. Others might turn to music, insofar as it is both energetic and momentary, fluid through time.
Imagining Other Dimensions of Matter-Energy
If all forms of matter are forms of energy, and all forms of energy are forms of feeling with spontaneity of their own, it becomes possible to imagine other forms of matter-energy beyond those currently discovered by science, potentially existing in other dimensions of the space-time continuum. Indeed "spiritual" realities—such as spirits, ancestors, artificial intelligence, and divine beings—might likewise be understood as forms of matter, emerging from or embodying the dynamics of matter-energy events.

15 Minute Introduction
to Condensed Matter Physics

The Very Short Introductions Podcast

Ross H. McKenzie is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His research in condensed matter physics focuses on using quantum theory to understand complex materials, ranging from organic superconductors to fluorescent proteins. In this episode, Ross H. McKenzie introduces condensed matter physics, the field which aims to explain how states of matter and their distinct physical properties emerge. A PDF transcript for this episode can be found here: https://oxford.ly/3SmMYP3 Learn more about "Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction" here: https://oxford.ly/46UfEmZ

Condensed Matter Physics:
A Very Short Introduction

Ross H, McKenzie is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His research in condensed matter physics focuses on using quantum theory to understand complex materials, ranging from organic superconductors to fluorescent proteins.

There are many more states of matter than just solid, liquid, and gas. Examples include liquid crystal, magnet, glass, and superconductor. New states are continually, and unexpectedly, being discovered. Some states, such as superconductor, can act like Schrödinger's cat and exhibit the weirdness normally associated with the quantum theory of atoms, photons, and electrons. Condensed matter physics seeks to understand how states of matter and their distinct physical properties emerge from the atoms of which a material is composed.

A system of many interacting parts can have properties that the parts do not have. Water is wet, but a single water molecule is not. Your brain is conscious, but a single neuron is not. Such emergent phenomena are central to condensed matter physics and also occur in many fields, from biology to computer science to sociology, leading to rich intellectual connections. When do quantitative differences become qualitative differences? Can simple models describe rich and complex behaviour? What is the relationship between the particular and the universal? How is the abstract related to the concrete? Condensed matter physics is all about these big questions.

Superconductivity

Excepts from the Podcast: Ross McKenzie

Superconductivity occurs in many metals when they're cooled down to extremely low temperatures, close to absolute zero—that's minus 273 degrees Centigrade. Now in the superconducting state, a metal can conduct electricity perfectly, that is perfectly, without generating any heat at all. The superconducting state also has a unique property, in that it expels magnetic fields, meaning that you can levitate objects, whether sumo wrestlers or trains. The discovery of superconductivity in 1911 presented a considerable intellectual challenge. What is the origin of this new state of matter? How do the electrons in the metal interact with one another to produce a perfect conductor, a superconductor?

Now, I find superconducting even more interesting when considering quantum theory. Now, by 1930, it was widely accepted that quantum theory, in all its strangeness, could describe the atomic world of electrons, protons, and photons. However, this strangeness does not show itself in the everyday world of what we can see and touch. You cannot be in two places at the same time, your cat is either dead or alive. However, condensed matter physicists have shown that the boundary between the atomic and everyday world is not so clear cut. A piece of superconducting metal can take on some weird quantum properties, just like a single atom, even though the metal is made of billions of billions of atoms. It can be put in two quantum states at the same time, almost like Schrödinger's famous cat that was dead and alive at the same time

Thee rest of this page is a brief introduction to Condensed Matter Physics based on Professor Ross H. McKenzie's "Very Short Introduction to Condensed Matter Physics (Oxford University Press). The fifteen minute podcast below makes the case for some what is said above.

More on Superconductivity

A scholarly discussion from BBC

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery made in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926). He came to call it Superconductivity and it is a set of physical properties that nobody predicted and that none, since, have fully explained. When he lowered the temperature of mercury close to absolute zero and ran an electrical current through it, Kamerlingh Onnes found not that it had low resistance but that it had no resistance. Later, in addition, it was noticed that a superconductor expels its magnetic field. In the century or more that has followed, superconductors have already been used to make MRI scanners and to speed particles through the Large Hadron Collider and they may perhaps bring nuclear fusion a little closer (a step that could be world changing).

Featuring

Nigel Hussey
Professor of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Bristol and Radbout University

Suchitra Sebastian
Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge

Stephen Blundell
Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Mansfield College