Plato's Code
Plato's Code: the geometry of momentum is a publication by Malcolm Macleod pertaining to mathematical realism (Platonism) and its relationship to natural selection (cosmological artificial selection).
The premise is that the universe evolved according to a mathematical (geometrical) natural selection. The Planck constants (Planck mass, Planck length, Planck constant, elementary charge...) are geometrical entities that were stable (symmetrical) forms and so survived this cosmological natural selection process.
Using Plato's Fifth element as an analogy, it is argued that it is the geometrically symmetrical nature of the fundamental constants that confers upon them that title and to which we owe our visible universe. The structure of the electron, for example, can be formulated as a spherical Magnetic monopole (ampere-meter).
Lee Smolin, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute first popularized in his 1997 book The Life of the CoSMoS the concept that a cosmological natural selection (otherwise known as the Fecund universes theory) might occur via the same rules as those which apply in biology.
Cosmological artificial selection extends cosmological evolution to suggest that the universe began with a predefined set of initial conditions/rules, the presumption that the laws of physics were not yet in existence during the big bang but instead are a logical and predictable outcome of those initial conditions.
Quote
...in the beginning there were no laws of physics, rather the universe evolved from an initial condition into the present state via a process of (a geometrical) natural selection. The present laws of physics, the fundamental forces, constants and particles are those which ‘survived’ this process. It is this initial condition, and not the laws of physics, which constitutes a TOE (theory of everything).
See also
- Deism
- Planck units
- Charged Planck momentum
External links
Editions
Originally entitled "Chess board universe (geometry of momentum)", 2003
- Revised Plato's Code: the geometry of momentum, 2007: ISBN 985-6544-50-5