A modern try at elements

Science and Technology
1
"One of the simplest or essential parts or principles of which anything consists, or upon which the constitution or fundamental powers of anything are based." - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/element
 

The idea of elemets seems to be very old, I don’t realy know how old but I guess it belongs to the earliest attempts of humans to understand the surrounding world in a basic elementary way. Quite frankly everyone knows the four elemets fire,water,earth,air ; some know the chinese 5 elements fire,water,earth,wood,metal ; and again everyone is informed about the chemical elements in the periodic table and the Standard Model with its Elementary particles.

But let’s just ignore the previous attempts on elements and figure out elements on our own, with our modern viewpoint. Let’s do what all the others done before all over again, only from our perspective. Even if it is a waste of time, perhaps its interesting what we come up with. This means the previous mentioned elements and others alike, aren’t directly discussed nor concerned.

 

First attempt, includet everything we know and understand. … Let’s first determen of what, we want to find the elements of.

Our surrounding world, … , how about everything. Everything that exists understood as our surrounding world. So we want to find the elements of everything that exists.

Continuing the attempt; I figured 5 Elements that couldn’t get broken down any smaller. Well except the fact that all of them do exists and therfore could be brought to a point of one single existing existence, but thats not the actual point.

Form, Logic, Material, Dimension, Energy

The terms alone may not be enough so I’ll try to specify a bit.

  • Dimension, the expanses to measure something in. Known, the basic expansion of Spacetime.
  • Logic is kinda already a specific name, meant is the laws/rules by which everything behaves. Known, the laws of nature. Brought down to a single law it would be something like the single law of everithing from which all the other laws emerge from.
  • Material, the litteral material that everything is made out of. Known, Quantum field theory summarized and compressed to one single field. (Just for the sound of it how about to use the scifi term subspace instead of quantum-something?)
  • Form, the abstract shape that material takes. Litteral just the shape of something.
  • Energy, the changing between shapes. Known, the process of causality. Potential/latent energy therefore is not energy but the potential for such, which can be released and then becomes energy.
This would be all, I can't figure of something that couldn't be described in this characteristics, elements. Except for the existing of existence itself of course. Existing is its own thing that I tried to categorize into elements.

 

2

I came up with 12 “elementary values” and 4 “fundamental forces”, from which all subsequent evolutionary processes stemmed.

What are the 12 elementary particles?

The 12 elementary particles of matter are six quarks (up, charm, top, Down, Strange, Bottom) 3 electrons (electron, muon, tau) and three neutrinos (e, muon, tau). Four of these elementary particles would suffice in principle to build the world around us: the up and down quarks, the electron and the electron neutrino.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle

What are the 4 fundamental forces

There are 4 fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. They work over different ranges and have different strengths. Gravity is the weakest but it has an infinite range.
https://home.cern/science/physics/standard-model#

AFAIK, these elementary quantum values emerged from the original “energy plasma” (chaos) and self-organized into the earliest “elements”.

 

3

I see what @didirius is getting at. Though, those terms are characteristics of “stuff”.

It would be like turning an axis of orientation on it’s side.

 

4

Is the purpose of the OP to put forward methodological naturalism?

5

Couldn’t resist trying to figure out what “Methodological Naturalism” was all about.

Published: 21 June 2016 Methodological naturalism and the truth seeking objection Erkki Vesa Rope Kojonen International Journal for Philosophy of Religion volume 81, pages 335–355 (2017)

Abstract
Methodological naturalism, the exclusion of the supernatural from the natural sciences, has drawn critique from both proponents of Intelligent Design and some philosophical naturalists who argue that the methods of science can also be used to evaluate supernatural claims. One principal objection to methodological naturalism has been what I call the truth seeking objection. In this article I develop an understanding of methodological naturalism capable of answering the truth seeking objection. I further also argue that methodological naturalism as a convention of science can be best defended by abandoning scientism. In this way methodological naturalism can be reconnected to the original theistic context in which it was first developed.


The 21 notes presented after the short Abstract, but before the study,( since it’s behind a pay wall) is a fascinating case of down the rabbit hole. Making room for intelligent design seems to be an aspect of it. To my eye’s I see another example of human over indulging their intellects and getting lost.

Here again, a clear declaration that Physical Reality really does exist, and that it’s well beyond the realm of us and what of goes on in our ever imaginative minds, would cut through a lot of nonsense.

As for Intelligent Design, I believe it is a natural human reflex when trying make sense to the amazing complexity those who study nature discover. It’s more an emotional reaction to being overwhelmed by the fold within fold of complexity we find. If it were recognized as something coming from within us and not bestowed from some outside universal agent - much folly could be avoided. Trying to squeeze it into actual physical science is a loser every time.