I've been pondering the mystery of physical boundaries for a long time since it's important for understanding an essential element of existence. This post presents a thought experiment that examines material boundaries.
Mystery of Hand on Table
Imagine a hand on a table, like the image above. The hand and the table appear to have clear boundaries. The hand's skin is a biological organ and the material of the table's surface is an inanimate object, both of which have distinct boundaries that separate them. We instinctively know where the top of the table and the bottom of the hand meet, not only with our eyes but also by feeling the hard surface of table through our tactile sense of touch.
From a materialist perspective, it's just two material forms (one a living form and the other not) with the living forms' sense organs (nerves in the skin) sending impulses to the brain where the sense of touch is perceived. This process informs a person that the hand is resting on the solid table. While we could argue that the sensations of hardness the person perceives requires a nonphysical mind function, it would be a hypothetical, so let's move on and look more deeply in another direction.
Shrunk to Atom Size
Now imagine that you could shrink down to the size of an atom and you crawled to where the hand and table met. An atom is an extremely small unit of ordinary matter that constitutes a chemical element. Atoms, which are only around 1/254,000,000 of an inch, are the basic building blocks of chemistry (the make up the Period Table of Elements). Most of an atom is empty space. More about atoms
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| Depiction of an atom |
For one thing, if you could see inside the hand's skin cells, you'd notice the cell's many smaller components as depicted below.
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| Depiction of a cell |
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| Depiction of a molecule |
Being that the cells and molecules in the hand differ from the those in the table, you would be able to distinguish the boundaries of each based on these differences.
Shrunk to Quantum Size
Now let's assume you were even smaller than an atom, that is, you were the size of quantum particle (of which there are over a dozen types). As discussed in a previous post, these quanta are elementary particles--the building blocks of all matter in the Universe--which are spread out across space as waves of probability called the quantum wave function. As I understand it, a wave is just abstract concept based on a mathematical formula that helps determine where a particle will is most likely appear when observed/measured (at which time the waves "collapse" to become a material particle).
So, when a quantum is a wave (i.e., in its "wave state") it is not anything real. They become real when they pop into existence (materialize) via very complex principles science does not understand. When they pop out of existence they turn back in those nonmaterial waves.
There's long been a debate on whether the consciousness of a living thing plays a role in the the existence (materialization) of the particles; here's one video that disputes it. On the other hand, here's an article about the strange link between mind and quantum physics and another article (that's rather dense), which asserts that consciousness--defined as "life"--does have an important role to play. What actually makes all this happen? No one has a clue.
Regardless of any effect of consciousness on quanta, under the right conditions, the quanta clump together to produce the components of atoms that build molecules. The molecules create cells and organs of living forms, as well as the substance of inanimate objects.
Where Boundaries Begin
Despite all this weirdness and uncertainty, one thing seems clear: There are no apparent boundaries between the hand and table at the quantum level. There are just invisible conceptual waves of "nothingness" that interact to somehow produce infinitesimally small particles of matter which combine to create forms with boundaries. I therefore claim that, as shown in the figure below, the boundaries of matter become detectable only after groups of atoms compound into molecules. And those boundaries cannot be detected with the naked eye before organs (or inanimate objects) have been created.
What this means to me is that the reality we experience has no material/physical aspect at its core. It's built on a foundation of quanta that lacks the boundaries needed to separate the insides of material things from everything else. As such, at it most fundamental level, the Universe is just an indistinguishable blob of formless subatomic particles that appear and disappear from existence.
Consciousness/mind, being nonmaterial, could have existed in some nonphysical state before there was space and time, however, even though nothing material would have existed for it to experience.
Logical Conclusion
Putting this all together, it seems logical to conclude that preceding the moment of the Big Bang there was just nothingness that had the latent potential to be manifest as material forms with distinct boundaries. This nothingness may have been the precursor to quanta and have shared similar "wave state" qualities.
It also points to the conclusion that the material Universe we experience--vast space containing solid physical forms--is not really as we perceive. The foundation of all matter at its most basic level is nothing...just a concept of probability which somehow becomes infinitesimally small elementary particles with very strange qualities. These particles
coalesce into material forms with boundaries that our consciousness somehow perceives as real things (including life forms). Science has little to no useful answers about the how's and why's of our these aspects of our experience of reality.
