Mark L. Collins

Maximum Irony Mark L. Collins

This book provides a new way to think about "problems" of general interest that permits greater comprehension than both traditional philosophy and our modern, materialistic science. Since the 1920's, philosophical materialism has been outmoded as a foundation of science, but unfortunately scientists and non-scientists continue to think with its confusing and limited concepts.

The name of this philosophy is "mathematical nihilism" or "zero-sum nihilism." It has nothing to do with Russian nihilism or any other political or ethical nihilism. It is a metaphysical doctrine that says that the multiverse is so constituted that all complete conservation laws in physics must sum to zero.

Most people think that conserved quantities in physics are conserved because they are indestructible or "substantial." Quite the contrary, what is conserved is conserved because it is a perfectly balanced zero-sum. Zero cannot change - it is eternally zero. That is the surprising origin of conservation laws.

Thus, the use of the Latin word "nihil" in the name "mathematical nihilism." For simplicity, throughout the book, it is often referred to as simply "nihilism," although it has "nihil" in common with the ordinary meaning of "nihilism" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The theory of "mathematical nihilism" is used to explain why the universe is a nearly perfect vacuum, the emptiness of the atom, the emptiness of nucleons (protons and neutrons), the origin of the laws of conservation, as well as to explain why Darwin's most surprising idea that "greater" comes from "lesser" must be true, and why no philosophical or psychological monism has ever provided -and never will provide- a satisfactory account of the observables.

It is easier to start reading this book from Appendix "0." The book has two halves. The first half is a fictional account of a dream I had as an 11th grader in 1971, while immersed in Plato's Dialogues, in which I was visited and lectured by a superhuman being, a relentless gadfly like Socrates, a philosopher-scientist known as a "zetosopher" (pronounced zay toss' so fur). The second half, the Appendices, is a science-based account of the philosophy enunciated by the zetosopher.