Abstract
In the current quest to unify physics, it is the combination of the principle of sufficient reason plus the dynamical perspective writ large that has in great part motivated the particular kind of unification being sought. We review the dynamical paradigm (dynamism) and the foundational problems it faces with unification. In particular, the problems dynamism has in providing a fundamental self-vindicating explanatory unification. We suggest a possible alternative model of unification based not on dynamical laws and differential equations, but on an adynamical global organizing principle. According to this “integralist” or extremum approach, fundamental reality is not being described via some fundamental entity or entities evolving in time according to dynamical laws against a spacetime background per certain boundary conditions. Instead, the most fundamental fact of reality is the boundary of a boundary principle which underlies the self-consistency of space, time and divergence-free sources (spacetimematter) at both the fundamental and classical levels to provide a self-explaining unification scheme. We avoid the problems posed for dynamism because we assume from the start that the entire enterprise is one of self-consistency writ large. Therefore, we believe it is ultimately possible that a global adynamical organizing principle can provide the basis for a strategy of self-consistency writ large whence a self-vindicating unification of physics.
Michael David Silberstein