Toward a new paradigm of physics?

  The 18th century marked the dawn of the Enlightenment—a revolution in thought that gave rise to Newtonian mechanics and, later, the breakthroughs of Darwin, Maxwell, and others pioneers of science. What Thomas Kuhn would eventually call a paradigm shift was grounded in two foundational pillars: the scientific method, based on systematic and reproducible experimentation, and reductionism—the belief that the whole is merely the sum of its parts. For over two centuries, this framework delivered extraordinary results. While political institutions evolved slowly—our democracies would be recognizable to the Greeks, our republics to the Romans—science and technology advanced with breathtaking speed, building our modern world.

  But on the way, something curious happened. After an explosive start in the early 20th century, progress in fundamental understanding began to stall. On the surface, it didn’t seem that way: Einstein reshaped our conception of space and time, quantum theory revealed the strange world of subatomic particles, and physics culminated in the unthinkable power of the atomic bomb. Prometheus had seemingly given us not only fire but the very secrets of the gods.

  Yet from the outset, cracks appeared. Was matter made of particles or waves? Was reality deterministic or probabilistic? Einstein famously rejected indeterminacy—"God does not play dice"—but Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle held firm: the more precisely one measured a particle’s position, the less precisely one could know its momentum. This wasn’t philosophical vagueness—it was experimentally confirmed, and became a pillar of quantum mechanics.

  The debate culminated in the 1927 Copenhagen Interpretation, asserting that observation collapses the wave function into the reality we perceive. With that, the deeper metaphysical questions were shelved. Physics hardened. It expanded in scope—the particle zoo grew, equations multiplied—but it stopped deepening. The dream of unifying the very large (relativity) and the very small (quantum theory) has remained out of reach.

  The suspicion has grown that something fundamental is missing. That the whole is not merely the sum of the parts.

  In a following essay to be published in early August, we will explores a possible resolution of the problem by proposing a shift in perspective, away from reductionism and toward emergence. Rather than dissecting nature into ever smaller components, we ask how complexity, coherence, and meaning arise from interactions. This reframing does more than offer answers—it transforms the questions themselves by shining a spotlight illuminating different aspects of reality. To be continued...