Against the supernatural as a profound idea--Part 5

Natural things are made of matter and supernatural things are not made of matter

The meaning of the word "matter" in science is unclear. Matter tends to be regarded as the substance from which physical objects are made, but the force fields involved in making up physical objects are not usually regarded as matter. Photons, which are particles of light or other types of electromagnetic radiation, are not usually regarded as being matter, though some people would disagree.

There is enough difference of opinion about the meaning of the word "matter" to make it ill-advised to try to base a profound definition of anything on it. Even if we decided to use the most widely accepted view of matter, science already accepts many things which are not matter. For example, gravity is not currently regarded as being matter. If scientists ever find that gravity's underlying cause is some kind of particle (some people have suggested "graviton" theories) then we might discuss whether it is semantically correct to classify "gravity" as matter: some people would say that those particles are not matter, or that the effect of gravity is not matter. If supernatural things are not matter then a lot of things would have to be viewed as not being matter.

When people talk about the "supernatural" being things that are not matter they might really mean "solid" things, yet the idea of "solid matter" is nothing more than an abstraction in modern science, with underlying physics being used to explain it. The idea of solid matter is certainly not a cornerstone of science.

Some people might mean "particles," yet particles are also just another abstraction used to explain observations. Any "effect" which is observed at a particular point in space, particularly if it seems to be associated with mass, is likely to be called a particle. As an example, returning to gravity again, suppose we found that gravity is caused by a type of "something" which appears to be localized at a point in space at any time and gets transmitted between objects: that "something" would probably be considered a particle. This would not be because particles are a special kind of stuff, but because "particle" is a particular kind of abstract concept. Any "supernatural" thing which manifested itself in the world in the same way as particles could only be sensibly considered in terms of particles. It would not make sense to say that "it is not particles but only looks like particles" when "particle" is just an abstract concept anyway.

It may be a bit unclear what I mean here, so I will give an example:

Suppose that ghosts exist, as classically imagined by many people, and are "supernatural" (whatever that means). Ghosts are typically supposed to be observed at some place in space, so we can clearly think of a ghost observation in terms of location. Ghosts are clearly supposed to interact with the physical world. People typically claim to detect ghosts by seeing them, which means that they are supposed to have an effect on light. This effect clearly appears to be localized in some way and would be understandable as a particle interaction because that is what we are seeing. In fact, if ghosts really did exist like this the strange thing is that their interaction with the world be very conventional in one way: A ghost would be existing at some place in space and interacting with the world around it, just as most other things seem to do. If ghosts want to be weird they should try harder.

You might ask how we can know that particles are involved if we cannot see what is underlying the phenomena, but we do not need to know. By behaving in this sort of way -- involving localized interactions with the rest of the world -- whatever ghosts are doing to be detectable by us would probably fall under the semantic umbrella of particle interactions.

If you think that the "natural" world is "particles" and the "supernatural" world is something that is "not particles" then you also have the problem that science is in no way dependent on the idea of the particle. The idea of the particle is used just because it is convenient: in particular it appears to match well with how we perceive reality in everyday life. Strange experimental results in quantum mechanics are explained in terms of wave-particle duality, the idea that all particles have a wave nature. This is outside the realm of what many people would think "sensible" particles should be doing, but is still describable by science. Some people think that the need to combine two models -- a particle model and a wave model -- in what seems such an ad hoc way is evidence that neither model is the complete picture. Some models are proposed in which the idea of the "particle" is abandoned as a fundamental idea and in which the appearance of particles is merely due to other things that are less obvious to us. For example, in Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics [3], all that exists is the quantum wavefunctions, with decoherence giving the appearance of particles. The many-worlds interpretation may or may not be true - many people think it is nonsense -- but that is not the point. It can be stated as a scientific model in which the basic "essence" of reality is far more abstract than things encountered in our everyday experience and in which there are not "things" existing at discrete locations.

Why did I say this? I wanted to show that science is not dependent on the idea of a particular "type of stuff." Science does not rely on "matter" or "particles," but will use whatever abstractions seem to be needed to represent reality. The idea of "particles" is just one of these abstractions and descriptions of reality which involve other things can, and are, dealt with in science and in some views of science, the idea of the "particle" is not even a fundamental idea. Claiming that "natural" things are made of a particular type of stuff, such as "particles," and that "supernatural" things are not, would be a trivial way of defining the boundary between "natural" and "supernatural" things.

When people say that "natural" things are made of matter and "supernatural" things are made of something else, they are being vague, but they may really be trying to say that "supernatural" things are non-physical, an idea which we will now consider.

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