How strange it seems that an institution of world-class scientists and established for the purpose of focusing on “questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology” itself has put out the call for input on the meaning of “fundamental”. The wording, “what exactly 'foundational' means, and what relation it holds to 'fundamental' as a term describing some branches of physics” suggests that the meaning that gives the Foundational Questions Institute (FXQI) its force and purpose might be extrapolated from or characterized by all the instances of meaning of “fundamental”, as though a sampling survey is being done. Here, the essence of “fundamental” would have to be known to recognize the parameters used in searching for it. That the question is in a metalanguage – object language form (filling with content the container “fundamental”), because so many variants exist (“fundamental” being an adjective), and because so many of these variants refer to “reality”, “existence”, etc., the discussion is best handled not by iterating numerous examples (impossible to do in this short space) but deferring to philosophy. It turns out that what “fundamental” does mean is the quest, itself (process as object), asking about existence, why we are here, the nature of time, and so forth, the same questions that have been addressed for millennia by philosophers and scientists philosophically inclined. To say that the meaning of “fundamental” in an absolutist way cancels the need for that process, something that FXQI would find disconcerting, to say the least. Neither can there be any such static conclusions, lest anyone proclaim herself/himself as “God”. Instead, Conclusion describes a dialectic exists within us to discern how the vessel of foundation is filled with the contents from the fundamental one.
Jeremy Horne