Is Reality Finite II?

"Conventional wisdom held that science had reached its end point generations ago. The great equation from which every law of physics could be derived was in existence. Its solutions described the origin and ultimate fate of all that was, all that ever could be."

-Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1998), 19, p. 235.

 

"Admittedly, more often than not, calculation was impossible. The principles of chaos and complexity took over. One could always find surprises in every field from archaeology to practical astronomy. Most humans had come to regard them as trivial, unworthy of a deep thinker."

-ibid., p. 236.

 

"...things went on around the great black hole - monstrous forces, convulsions in space-time - which the scientists at Proserpina could not account for or even give a name to."

-ibid., 31, p. 396.

 

Guthrie: "'It'll get worse once we learn what's really going on at the core of the galaxy.'"

Chuan: "'I don't know what it is. I cannot comprehend. But the great equation, the ultimate summation, is clearly incomplete. I suspect that the new knowledge, the new physics, can lead to - a power to transform the universe.' He shuddered."

-ibid., p. 397.

 

It seems intuitively wrong that reality should be limited. Even if material objects did not exist, possibilities would still exist and possibilities can be actualized. Physicists tell us that virtual particles begin and cease to exist according to the uncertainty principle and therefore that the vacuum is full of energy.