ourlivinguniverse

Whilst there are various theories on why cooperation emerges in nature, these all remain to varying degrees unsatisfactory and certainly not capable of full generalisation, as per Darwin's theory for competition. Has there been any historic consideration of the quantum nature of food? As a generality food comes in quanta in the wild - individual fruits, clumps of grass, individual prey, etc. When population pressure increases and competition becomes intense for a limited supply of food, could this quantised nature of food be a generalised reason for the emergence of cooperation? Consider scenario. 100 monkeys descend on a tree with 90 fruit. Only 90 monkeys eat that day. 10 go without and will be severely weakened before getting to the next fruiting tree. But if some monkeys learnt to share fruit, then they'd get, say, 9/10ths of a fruit each and thereby keep going another day. Cooperation in this context may have little benefit on a one-off basis. But if food was scarce for a long period, then this evolutionary strategy would have a clear benefit. The first step of cooperation, then, would be a generalised measure to enable the smoothing of food supply from one day to the next. It would even apply to those herds on the savannah, forced to cooperate when the rains don't come and the otherwise abundant grass recedes to a few, dispersed clumps of grass and pools of water.

Classical physics was predicated on a materialistic mindset, which automatically assumed that basic matter is entirely inanimate. To the Victorians atoms and any other particles are objects which respond to forces. And from that we have spent much time trying to elicit what those fundamental forces of nature are. For the past 100 years, quantum mechanics has been trying to tell us otherwise. And we've been moving away from the materialistic approach. But are we willing to take the full leap. What if we saw particles of matter responding spontaneously to their energetic environments (just as bacteria respond spontaneously to their sugar environment). All those forces that we observe (gravity, electrical, magnetic, strong, weak) would then be the consequence of the behaviour of matter and not the cause. If you follow through this way of thinking then it is possible to attribute all those forces to the behaviour of matter under different energetic circumstances. The reasons why we have phases of matter such as gas, solid and liquid become explicable. And, better still, the conundrum of wave-particle duality becomes trivial to answer. Oh, and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can be explained without going through statistical mechanical contortions.

Classic physics suggests that atoms, and all particles, are simply objects which are influenced by forces applied to them. If you change your frame of reference to see particles as material systems responding spontaneously to their energetic environment, then there is no need to imagine any a priori forces. All the forces that we observe would then arise as the consequence of the behaviour of matter and not the cause. For the last 100 years quantum mechanics has been trying to persuade us to look at the universe differently from our very wedded materialistic philosophy associated with classic physics. Perhaps we're missing something. If you see particles as systems responding spontaneously to their energetic environment, then wave-particle duality becomes trivial.

Are atoms inanimate? Is it possible to prove whether: – Atoms are inanimate objects which respond to a priori forces OR – Atoms are material systems which respond spontaneously to their energetic environment This might seem an esoteric question, but it has fundamental implications for the way we see the universe around us. The former statement is consistent with materialistic philosophy, that which we’ve inherited from the Victorians. But the latter would seem to be the direction of travel that quantum mechanics is taking us in. If the latter holds, then all forces of nature are the consequence of the behaviour of matter and not the consequence! Is it possible to prove one or the other? url deleted