Physics has Evolved Beyond the Physical

Abstract

Contemporary physics is, indeed, at a crucial crossroads that impacts our ideas about the nature of mind. Through the development of computers, as the crucial application of mathematical methods has grown, the limits of our specific methods and applications have become far more clear, more quickly, than they ever could have without massive computing power. The limits hinted at by Gödel are becoming more specific and applicable rather than vague idealizations. The very nature of our computation methods have become fundamentally unsuited to meet our requirements. We have recognized the necessity for "massively parallel" systems even if our current incarnations of them are less than truly concurrent. Simultaneously, physics has begun to probe the strange borderline between information and energy that were first encountered with questions of the EPR paradox. With the physics community recognizing its own need for revolution, some writers have suggested that the solution be an abandonment of physicality as a basis for understanding the world. This fully oppositional and reactionary response is the most common response to seemingly intractable problems, but perhaps there is a middle ground which abandons nothing of physicality while embracing some additional understanding of phenomena that adds to our understanding, via a perspective shift. Schrödinger believed we could simply transform our perspective instead of abandoning it and that wisdom is what may serve us today. Perhaps we have already begun down the correct path without fully, yet, embracing it.