DEMATERIALIZZAZIONE DELLA FISICA

Quantum Mechanics has taught us a lesson that goes well beyond a set of new physical laws. It has provided us with genuine “theorems of epistemology”. We now know that there are situations when the observation of the world cannot be considered as the mere reading of a reality pre-existing the observation, whereas there are circumstances where the knowledge of the whole do not corresponds to the knowledge of the parts (holism). We know that there are incompatible properties that are complementary. We know that there exist properties of the whole that are incompatible with any property of each part. The notion of “object” defined in terms of its “properties ” is in contrast with its mereologic connotation according to which objects can be composed to form new objects. The particle ontology as localizable unity is in contrast with the Malament theorem in quantum field theory. To the above add the fact that the two more general fundamental theories in physics – the quantum theory of fields and the general relativity of Einstein – are logically incompatible. In order to reconcile the logical coherence of the observations with their theoretical explanation we need a radical change of paradigm. The solution here proposed is to abandon the vision of the world as a “mechanism” and to substitute it with that of “algorithm”. This is the paradigm of the “universe as a huge computer” that have been latent within the community since Richard Feynman, and nowadays is resurrecting in physics, showing its full theoretical power. In the new algorithmic vision the “mechanics” becomes an emergent phenomenology. Without the need of physical primitive, the new “informational” program allows us to found physics on solid axiomatic grounds. The quantum theory of abstract systems along with the free quantum field theory are derived from information-theoretic axioms. The axioms of quantum theory all have an epistemological connotation, and pertain the possibility of falsifying the propositions of the theory. They reconnect holism with reductionism, probabilism and falsifiability, substituting the notion of “object” with that of “system” and of “event”, and logically implying the theorem of quantum theory without the need of using the abstract Hilbert-spaces toolkit. The free quantum field theory (Weyl, Dirac e Maxwell) is obtained by adding axioms of minimization of algorithmic complexity. The informational framework well separates the notions of “experiment”and “theory”: the theory connects input with output, the experiment being identified with the collection of input, output, and objective intermediate events. The objective reality (experiment) is made of “icons” with which we interact: the theory is the underlying algorithm. The paradigm describes the tapestry of reality as pure software, “software”. “Software without hardware”: the dematerialization of physics. “Reality without realism” means pure logical coherentism.