The hardness of the world (1)

How Quantum Unreality Becomes Organismic Reality

By Bodhangkur

 

1. Introduction: A Paradox in Plain Sight

At the smallest scales accessible to physics, the world lacks every property that common sense regards as fundamental.
There is no solidity, no surfaces, no stable objects, no “hard stuff,” no colours, no things-with-shape. There are only field amplitudes, excitations, conservation laws, couplings, and prohibitions such as Pauli exclusion. Yet the macroscopic world experienced by organisms — exemplified here by “Finn,” the generic human observer — is irreducibly concrete. A wall is not a suggestion, a metaphor, or a mathematical representation; it is hard.

This essay explains, rigorously and without metaphysical embellishment, how these two realities coexist without contradiction. It will show why ancient intuitions (“the fast overpower the slow,” “the many overpower the few”) map directly onto the deep structure of quantum mechanics, and how emergent phenomena bridge the gap between the unreal and the undeniably real.

 

2. The Quantum View: There Is No Hardness

Quantum physics denies solidity in any classical sense. Three facts are decisive:

1.     Atoms are almost empty:

More than 99.999999999% of an atom is space.

2.     Particles are not particles:
photons, electrons, and quarks are quantised excitations of underlying fields, with no spatial extent, no internal structure, and no “hard surface” that could collide with anything.

3.     Interactions, not objects, constitute the microscopic world:
The fundamental realities are rules (gauge symmetries), couplings, and prohibitions. The most important for solidity is Pauli exclusion, which forbids two identical fermions from occupying the same quantum state.

From this angle, the macroscopic experience of solidity is a theoretical impossibility. Nothing is hard because nothing at the fundamental level possesses the ontology required for hardness.

This is not interpretation. It is the current consensus description.

 

3. The Organismic View: Hardness Is Undeniable

For Finn — a biological interface — a wall is unambiguously hard.

This is not naďveté; it is operational truth.
Hardness is the property:

that prevents penetration and produces counterforce upon contact.

Every organism that survived evolutionary history did so because it treated macroscopic solidity as both real and actionable.

Thus:

·         organism-level reality is a predictive, behaviourally validated regime

·         microscopic-level reality is a mathematical and experimental regime

The mismatch is not a contradiction, but a change of level.

 

4. The Bridge: How the Many Override the None

The apparent contradiction dissolves when we add scale.
Three quantum mechanisms create solidity, but only when multiplied by astronomical numbers.

4.1 Electromagnetic Repulsion (EM)

Electrons repel other electrons due to the Coulomb interaction.
One electron repels another with trivial force.
But a hand contains ~10˛⁸ electrons; a wall contains similar numbers.
The microscopic repulsion is multiplied into macroscopic resistance.

4.2 Pauli Exclusion

Pauli exclusion forbids identical fermions from occupying the same quantum state.
This rule alone prevents atoms from collapsing into each other.
It is the deepest quantum source of “impenetrability.”

A single exclusion constraint is infinitesimal.
Trillions become physical rigidity.

4.3 High Multiplicity and Amplification

When a macroscopic object encounters another, enormous numbers of fermions interact simultaneously.

This generates:

·         pressure

·         rigidity

·         bounce

·         resistance

·         fracture

·         deformation

All are emergent phenomena, impossible to predict from one fermion, but inevitable from of them.

The druid said: “Pressure makes real.”

 

5. Philosophical Parallel: Ancient Intuition and Finn’s Phenomenology

The ancients (and Finn) described solidity functionally, not fundamentally:

To the slow, the fast are hard.
To the few, the many are hard.

This is an expression of dominance through scaling.

Quantum physics describes solidity through:

·         Pauli exclusion (difference)

·         EM repulsion (force)

·         foundational quantisation (non-overlap rules)

Ancient phenomenology and modern physics converge:

·         Hardness = when fast, many, or tightly bounded quanta overpower slow or few quanta.

·         Quantum mechanics provides the rules; macroscopic numbers provide the amplification; the nervous system registers this as hardness.

Thus Finn’s experiential world is not an illusion; it is an emergent regime.

 

6. The Transition Explained: How the Unreal Becomes Real

At the quantum level:

·         no solidity

·         no hardness

·         no surfaces

·         no objects

·         only rules, interactions, and excitations

At the macroscopic level:

·      those rules, repeated times per cubic centimetre, force impenetrability.

Hardness is not fundamental.
Hardness is not illusory.
Hardness is emergent.

In one sentence:

Hardness is what trillions of exclusion events feel like.

 

7. Why Quantum Unreality Does Not Undermine Finn’s Reality

Finn is not wrong.
Finn’s level of reality — the biological interface level — is every bit as real as the quantum one, because reality is defined by what reliably resists, constrains, and enables our actions.

From Finn’s perspective:

·         A wall is real because it stops him.

·         Hardness is real because it produces counterforce.

·         Solidity is real because it is behaviourally invariant.

Physics describes the constituents, not the experienced world.
Finn describes the experienced world, not its constituents.

There is no contradiction.
The world supports both simultaneously.

 

8. Conclusion: The World Is Hard Because the Rules Are Soft

At bottom, the universe contains neither bricks nor walls, neither wood nor stone, only:

·         quantised excitations

·         exclusion principles

·         electromagnetic interactions

·         stability through multiplicity

But when trillions of these soft quantum rules accumulate,
they produce the world Finn actually touches.

Thus:

The universe is fundamentally unreal in the sense of lacking macroscopic properties,
yet it is experientially real because emergent phenomena enforce them.

This dual structure — microscopic unreality, macroscopic certainty — is not paradox but architecture.
The soft rules of the quantum world generate the hard facts of the human one.

 

The hardness of the world (2)

 

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