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Toward an elemental grounding of microphysics

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Abstract

Contemporary physics has no answer to the question: What are the ultimate constituents of physical reality? (The variety of quarks hypothesized, and the multiplicity of their assumed properties, make it increasingly difficult to regard them as the ultimates.) The approach to an answer that is proposed in this paper starts with the assumption that there are utterly simple, uncomposed, indivisible elements and elemental events; and then attempts to draw inferences from this assumption, and particularly from the representation of the elements and events assumed. If such representation can be shown to be a uniquely necessary consequence of the Assumption of Elementality and its corollaries, then, from the permitted transformations of the representation, inferences could be derived about the possible and probable structures and processes of spacetime, energy, and matter.

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Spigelman, J.H. Toward an elemental grounding of microphysics. Found Phys 8, 759–785 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00717505

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00717505

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