The philosopher Kuhn distinguished routine science that changes theories, from paradigm shifts that change their foundations. The axioms a theory is built on are its foundations, just as a house has foundations. Changing foundations isn’t routine because it is difficult, so Kuhn argued that science involves long periods of evolutionary theory development, interspersed with occasional revolutionary paradigm shifts (Kuhn, 1970).
For example, Euclid’s assumption that parallel lines can’t converge was accepted for two thousand years, until it was realized that on curved surfaces like the earth, parallel longitudes do converge (at the poles). Changing that axiom gave hyper-geometries that work on curved surfaces, and made Euclid’s geometry the special case of a flat surface. Einstein’s relativity was another paradigm shift that included its predecessor, Newton’s mechanics, as a special case. Clearly, science sometimes needs to change its foundations to advance.
What then are good theory foundations? Chaitin argued that good axioms support more than one fact (Chaitin, 2006), based on Gödel’s proof that all theories are incomplete (Gödel, 1962). Good theories then use a few axioms to predict many facts. Ignoring this criterion by adding new axioms for every new fact gives stagnation, just as putting a shack on every new plot of land gives a shanty town not a city of skyscrapers. That a theory is stagnating then indicates that a paradigm shift is needed.
It is increasingly obvious that particle physics today is stagnating, as:
“One experiment after another is returning null results: No new particles, no new dimensions, no new symmetries.” (Hossenfelder, 2018).
It is equally obvious that physics has been adding new axioms to explain new facts for a while now. Particles and fields have increased but not their predictions. Gravitons were assumed to explain gravity, but predicted nothing new. Virtual particles with mass were assumed to explain neutron decay, but again predicted nothing. A Higgs field was assumed to explain how those particles had mass, but this also led nowhere. The field has increased in complexity but has made no breakthrough in decades, suggesting the need for a paradigm shift.
The paradigm shift proposed here is to base physics on quantum waves not matter particles, just as quantum theory does. This change is costly, but disruptive innovations are often the price of progress (Sandström, 2010). This change would add meaning to the equations of physics, to give it a semantic heart, as Schrödinger’s equation stays the same but now describes what exists, not what doesn’t. Just as giving up geocentrism gave new directions in astronomy, giving up materialism offers new directions in physics, such as a focus on light not matter (4.5.9). Changing Wheeler’s It from Bit into It from Qubit is the paradigm shift that physics needs, but it challenges the belief that we already have all the answers.