Symmetry in the Foundations of Physics II
A special issue of Symmetry (ISSN 2073-8994). This special issue belongs to the section "Physics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2024) | Viewed by 336
Special Issue Editor
Interests: fundamental physics; quantum mechanics; quantum physics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
That symmetry has been a major key to developing theories of physics is not surprising. The ability to recognize patterns has been a significant factor in the evolution of the human and other species precisely because symmetrical patterns are at the root of all natural processes. In physics the patterns have frequently assumed mathematical form as mathematics provides a compactified high-level ordering for physical symmetries. However, Nature is an accidental mathematician rather than a designer one. If we are to understand the origins of the mathematical structures at the heart of the Standard Model, for example, such as the SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) theory of the fundamental forces, the 4-vector connection of space and time, the dual nature of matter and antimatter, and the triple generational arrangement of quarks and leptons, we need to step outside of these symmetries as they are now presented, and find even deeper symmetries from which they originate. We will not attain to a more fundamental understanding if we see the familiar symmetries in their present form as the foundational basis for physics. They are in themselves too complicated to be the most primitive level concepts. Many of them, for example, describe broken symmetries, an arrangement which is not likely to be primitive. Consequently, the attempt to combine the Standard Model of particle physics with, say, General Relativity in a combined theory which is inevitably more complicated is likely to lead away from the kind of foundational symmetries that are their origin. Rather than synthesis we need analysis. It is inconceivable that symmetry is not significant at the foundational level, but to reach this level we need new approaches to symmetry which explain the complex symmetries we have so far discovered in terms of ones which are simpler and more general.
Prof. Dr. Peter Rowlands
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- foundational basis of physics
- primitive level concepts
- broken symmetries
- standard model
- mathematical representation
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