The Self-Preserving Machine: How Physics Filters Out Its Own Foundational Questions

 J. Rogers, SE Ohio

Abstract

Modern physics operates with a fundamental contradiction: it teaches dimensional constants (c, ℏ, k_B, G) as "fundamental properties of nature" while simultaneously using natural units that set these same constants to unity "without loss of generality." This paper argues that this is not a pedagogical oversight but a symptom of a self-preserving institutional system that has optimized for operational success (publications, predictions, technology) while systematically suppressing examination of its own foundational axioms. We demonstrate that physics has developed cultural antibodies against foundational inquiry, creating a filtering mechanism that removes students and researchers who insist on conceptual coherence. The resulting system is stable and productive, but may be fundamentally unable to resolve long-standing crises (quantum gravity, the measurement problem, the hierarchy problem) because it has eliminated the feedback channels necessary for paradigm-level self-correction.

1. The Contradiction at the Foundation

1.1 The Standard Narrative

Every physics undergraduate learns the following sequence:

Year 1-2: Constants as Fundamental

• The speed of light c = 299,792,458 m/s is presented as a fundamental constant of nature
• Planck's constant h = 6.626 × 10⁻³⁴ J·s encodes the quantum scale
• Boltzmann's constant k_B = 1.381 × 10⁻²³ J/K relates energy and temperature
• The gravitational constant G = 6.674 × 10⁻¹¹ m³/(kg·s²) determines gravitational strength

These are taught as deep, irreducible facts about reality. Students learn to measure them, memorize them, and treat them with reverence.

Year 3+: Natural Units Students are taught to "simplify" calculations by setting:

c = 1, ℏ = 1, k_B = 1, G = 1

This is presented as a "convenient choice of units" that "doesn't change the physics." The transition is typically handled with minimal explanation:

"We can choose units where c = ℏ = k_B = 1. This is just a convenience that makes calculations cleaner."

1.2 The Unexamined Implication

If these constants can be set to 1 "without loss of generality," this implies a profound ontological claim: there exists a single natural scale underlying all physical quantities.

In this natural scale:

• Spacetime intervals have one fundamental dimension
• Energy, mass, temperature, frequency are the same dimensional quantity
• The "constants" are merely conversion factors between our fragmented human unit charts and this unified natural scale

This is not a trivial calculational trick. This is a structural claim about reality.

Yet this claim is:

• Never explicitly stated as an axiom
• Never examined as a foundational assumption
• Never taught as a subject worthy of rigorous investigation
• Actively discouraged as a research direction

1.3 The Paradoxical Dual Status

The same constants are thus assigned contradictory roles:

In practice (calculations): "These are just conversion factors. Set them to 1."

In pedagogy (teaching): "These are fundamental constants of nature."

In metrology (measurement): "These define the SI system and are exact by definition."

In interpretation (philosophy): "Stop asking what they 'really are' and calculate."

This dual status is maintained by never forcing the contradiction into explicit view.

2. The Machine: A Systems Analysis

2.1 The Feedback Loop

Modern physics operates as a self-regulating system with the following structure:

Input: Bright, curious students with genuine questions about nature

Processing:

1. Teach dimensional constants as fundamental (Year 1-2)
2. Transition to natural units without ontological justification (Year 3+)
3. Dismiss foundational questions as "philosophical" or "not real physics"
4. Reward problem-solving within the existing framework
5. Filter out students who insist on conceptual coherence

Output:

• Primary: Pragmatic physicists who calculate effectively but don't question axioms
• Secondary: Attrited students who asked "too many" foundational questions

Feedback Signals:

• Success metrics: Papers published, grants secured, predictions verified, problems solved within paradigm
• Error signals: Student attrition, foundational crises (hierarchy problem, cosmological constant, measurement problem), conceptual incoherence

Correction Mechanism:

• Negative feedback: Marginalize questioners, redirect funding away from foundations, dismiss unresolved problems as "philosophical"
• Positive feedback: Reward those who work within the unexamined framework, promote pragmatists to positions of power

2.2 The Cultural Antibodies

When a student asks: "If we can consistently set c = ℏ = k_B = 1, what does that mean ontologically about these 'constants'?"

The system responds with predictable antibodies:

Response 1: Dismissal

"That's just a calculational convenience. Don't read too much into it."

Response 2: Reframing

"That's a question for philosophy of science, not physics."

Response 3: Social Pressure

"Everyone who succeeds in physics accepts this. Are you saying you know better than generations of physicists?"

Response 4: Redirection

"Stop worrying about units and focus on solving real problems."

Response 5: Pathologization

"You're overthinking it. Physics is about predicting experiments, not worrying about what things 'mean.'"

These are not arguments. They are immune responses designed to neutralize threats to the system's stability.

2.3 The Filtering Mechanism

The system implements a powerful selection filter:

Stage 1: Undergraduate

• Students who accept the contradiction without question → Advance
• Students who notice the contradiction but suppress curiosity → Advance
• Students who persistently question → Often advised to "reconsider" physics

Stage 2: Graduate School

• Students who work within the framework → Get advisor support, publish, graduate
• Students who attempt foundational research on unit systems and constants → Told to "focus on real problems," struggle to publish, face extended timelines or attrition

Stage 3: Postdoc/Faculty

• Researchers who stay within paradigm → Secure grants, publish in top journals, get tenure
• Researchers who pursue foundational questions about constants → Difficulty securing funding ("too philosophical"), struggle to place papers, relegated to "fringe"

Stage 4: Gatekeeping

• Those who survived the filter now staff hiring committees, grant panels, journal editorial boards
• They implement the same filter that selected them
• The loop closes

2.4 Generational Amnesia

The system exhibits progressive loss of foundational understanding:

Generation 1 (early 20th century):

• Developed natural units pragmatically
• Many understood the ontological implications (Planck, Einstein, Dirac)
• Chose not to emphasize them in favor of calculational progress

Generation 2 (mid 20th century):

• Learned natural units as "standard practice"
• Inherited the tool without the ontological context
• Began treating it as "just how it's done"

Generation 3 (late 20th century):

• Natural units are "obviously just convenience"
• Ontological questions are "obviously philosophy, not physics"
• Active suppression of foundational inquiry

Generation 4 (current):

• Complete amnesia that there ever was a foundational question
• The contradiction is invisible because it's never been examined
• Students who notice it are treated as confused rather than insightful

The system has successfully erased its own foundational assumptions from institutional memory.

3. The Suppressed Error Signals

3.1 Long-Standing Foundational Crises

Physics has several crisis-level problems that have resisted solution for decades:

The Hierarchy Problem:

"Why is the Higgs mass (~125 GeV) so much smaller than the Planck mass (~10¹⁹ GeV)?"

Reframed: Why are we treating dimensional mass scales as ontologically meaningful when we routinely use natural units where all dimensional scales collapse to unity?

The Cosmological Constant Problem:

"Why is the observed vacuum energy density 120 orders of magnitude smaller than quantum field theory predicts?"

Reframed: Why are we assigning dimensional energy to 'vacuum' when energy is a coordinate-dependent quantity in our unit chart? What does it mean to have "energy of empty space" in a framework where energy and frequency are the same dimensionless quantity?

The Measurement Problem:

"Why does measurement cause wavefunction collapse?"

Reframed: What is "measurement" in a framework where we've never examined what constants and units actually represent? If all physics reduces to dimensionless ratios, what does it mean to "measure" a dimensional quantity?

Quantum Gravity:

"Why can't we reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity?"

Reframed: Are we trying to unify two frameworks that make incompatible assumptions about the ontological status of constants and scales?

3.2 Why These Persist

The machine treats these as:

• "Hard problems" requiring new mathematical tools
• "Open research questions" that will eventually be solved within the paradigm
• "Challenges" for the next generation

The machine cannot treat them as:

• Symptoms of wrong axioms (this would require examining axioms)
• Evidence of foundational incoherence (this would delegitimize the framework)
• Signals that the paradigm needs revision (this would empower the filtered-out questioners)

These crises are suppressed error signals. They are the system screaming that something is wrong at the foundational level, but the system has eliminated the feedback channels necessary to interpret them as such.

4. A Constructive Proof: The Rogers Rational Unit Chart

To demonstrate that dimensional constants are arbitrary coordinate choices rather than fundamental properties of nature, consider the following unit system:

4.1 The Rogers Chart Definitions

Define a unit system where all fundamental constants have mantissa = 1 and clean powers of 10:

• c = 1 × 10¹⁰ m_r/s_r
• h = 1 × 10⁻³⁰ J_r·s_r
• k_B = 1 × 10⁻²⁰ J_r/K_r
• G = 1 × 10⁻⁶ m_r³/(kg_r·s_r²)

where m_r, s_r, J_r, K_r, kg_r are Rogers-chart base units.

4.2 Properties of the Rogers Chart

Mathematical Clarity:

• All constants have mantissa = 1
• All complexity is in powers of 10
• No "mysterious" irrational numbers in constants

Human Convenience:

• 4×8 foot construction materials → ~30.1×60.2 m_r² sheets
• 16 inches on center → ~10 m_r
• Divisibility of 30 and 60 provides practical advantages

Honest Structure:

• The "ugly" conversion factors are explicitly in the unit definitions
• Not hidden in "fundamental constants"
• Makes the arbitrariness obvious

4.3 The Invariant Content

In SI units:

• Rocket velocity: v = 149,896,229 m/s
• Speed of light: c = 299,792,458 m/s
• Dimensionless ratio: v/c = 0.5

In Rogers units:

• Rocket velocity: v = 5 × 10⁹ m_r/s_r
• Speed of light: c = 1 × 10¹⁰ m_r/s_r
• Dimensionless ratio: v/c = 0.5

In natural units:

• Rocket velocity: v = 0.5
• Speed of light: c = 1
• Dimensionless ratio: v/c = 0.5

The dimensional values are different in each system. The dimensionless ratio is identical.

Therefore, the physics is in the dimensionless ratio, not the dimensional constant.

4.4 What This Proves

The Rogers Rational Unit Chart is a proof by construction that:

1. Constants are arbitrary: You can make them any values you want by choosing units appropriately
2. Unit systems are conventional: Rogers units work exactly as well as SI for all physics
3. The "fundamental" status is unjustified: Nothing breaks when you change the constants
4. Dimensional constants are coordinate artifacts: They convert between your unit chart and the natural scale

When challenged with "You just moved the weird ratios into the unit definitions," the response is:

"Yes. And the fact that I could move them proves they were never fixed by nature. They were always fixed by our choice of unit conventions. I just made a different choice where the arbitrariness is more obvious."

5. What Would Break the Machine?

5.1 Required Changes for Self-Correction

For the system to correct itself, it would need:

1. Axiom Transparency Requirement

• Every paper must state: "This work assumes [explicit ontological commitments]"
• Papers using natural units must state: "We assume a single underlying natural scale"
• Make hidden assumptions visible

2. Pedagogical Coherence Requirement

• If constants are "fundamental" in Year 1 and "set to 1" in Year 3, the relationship must be explained
• Cannot present contradictory frameworks without reconciliation
• Admitting "we don't know why this works" is acceptable; pretending there's no question is not

3. Foundational Research as Legitimate

• Fund researchers examining "What does it mean that natural units work?"
• Treat conceptual coherence as equal to predictive success
• Create tenure-track positions for foundational physics

4. Institutional Memory

• Document why historical choices were made
• Preserve knowledge of alternatives considered
• Prevent pragmatic shortcuts from calcifying into unquestioned doctrine

5. Diversity of Epistemological Approaches

• Value researchers who prioritize conceptual clarity
• Don't filter exclusively for pragmatic problem-solvers
• Recognize that paradigm shifts require both types

5.2 Why This Won't Happen Organically

Problem 1: Gatekeepers benefit from the status quo

• Their careers were built within the current system
• Admitting foundational incoherence delegitimizes their life's work
• They have no incentive to change

Problem 2: Outputs are valuable enough

• Physics produces working technology
• Predictions are accurate
• Society doesn't demand conceptual coherence when pragmatic results are delivered

Problem 3: The filter is complete

• Those who could change the system were filtered out
• Those who survived the filter will implement the same filter
• No internal mechanism for paradigm-level change

Problem 4: Cultural inertia

• Textbooks teach the contradictory framework
• Standardized tests reward memorization, not questioning
• Peer review enforces conformity to current paradigms

5.3 Potential Breaking Points

Crisis Escalation: If quantum gravity, the hierarchy problem, and the cosmological constant remain unsolved for another 50 years, the community may be forced to admit "our foundational framework might have wrong axioms."

External Technological Pressure: If new experimental regimes (high-gamma biological travel, exotic quantum states, precision cosmology) reveal inconsistencies that can't be ignored, forced paradigm examination becomes necessary.

Generational Turnover: If enough senior physicists retire and younger researchers are less invested in defending the old framework, a window for change may open.

Outsider Articulation: If someone outside the filtering system clearly articulates the contradiction and gains traction in the broader intellectual community, physics may be forced to respond.

6. The Missing Feedback Channels

6.1 What the Machine Measures

Current success metrics:

• Publications in high-impact journals
• Grant funding secured
• Citation counts
• Number of students graduated
• Predictions verified experimentally
• Technology developed

All of these measure operational success within the paradigm.

6.2 What the Machine Ignores

Suppressed error signals:

• Student attrition due to foundational questions (filtered as "not suited for physics")
• Persistent foundational crises spanning decades (treated as "hard problems, not wrong framework")
• Conceptual incoherence between pedagogical stages (ignored as "just how it's taught")
• Inability to answer basic ontological questions about core concepts (dismissed as "philosophy")
• The fact that natural units work but no one can explain why (treated as "obviously just convenience")

The machine has optimized its feedback on operational metrics while ignoring conceptual metrics.

This is sustainable as long as operational success continues. But it makes the system brittle when faced with genuinely new physics that requires paradigm-level revision.

6.3 The Meta-Feedback Problem

To change the machine requires:

• Recognizing that foundational questions are error signals
• Allowing filtered-out perspectives back into the system
• Empowering those who prioritize conceptual coherence
• Changing hiring, funding, and publication norms

But this requires:

• People in power who see the problem
• Institutional structures that allow paradigm questioning
• A culture that values foundational clarity

The machine filtered out these people and structures.

Therefore, the machine cannot self-correct.

7. Implications and Predictions

7.1 For Physics Education

Current state: Students learn contradictory frameworks without reconciliation, accept it as "just how physics is," and replicate the pattern.

Reformed state would require:

• Explicit teaching: "We don't fully understand why natural units work ontologically"
• Honest presentation: "Constants may be coordinate artifacts, and here's why we think that"
• Encouraging rather than suppressing foundational questions
• Creating space for students who think deeply about conceptual coherence

7.2 For Foundational Physics

Current state: Foundational questions are marginalized; crises persist for decades; paradigm examination is career suicide.

Reformed state would require:

• Legitimizing research into "What are constants, really?"
• Funding research on the ontological status of units and scales
• Treating long-standing crises as potential paradigm failures, not just hard problems
• Valuing conceptual breakthroughs as much as technical solutions

7.3 For the Future of Physics

If the machine continues unchanged:

• Current crises may persist indefinitely
• Paradigm shifts will only occur through external pressure or generational exhaustion
• Physics will continue producing technology and predictions while remaining conceptually incoherent at its foundations

If the machine develops meta-feedback:

• Examination of the single-scale assumption could unlock new approaches to quantum gravity
• Understanding constants as coordinates might resolve hierarchy and cosmological constant problems
• Clarity on measurement and units could address the measurement problem
• A new generation of physicists might build conceptually coherent foundations for 21st-century physics

7.4 Testable Predictions

This analysis makes empirical predictions:

Prediction 1: Students who ask persistent foundational questions about constants and natural units will have higher attrition rates than students who accept the framework pragmatically.

Prediction 2: Grant proposals investigating "the ontological status of fundamental constants" will have lower funding success rates than proposals within established paradigms, regardless of technical merit.

Prediction 3: Papers attempting to examine the single-scale assumption as a foundational axiom will face difficulty in peer review, with reviewers categorizing them as "philosophy" rather than "physics."

Prediction 4: Physics departments will have few or no faculty whose primary research is foundational examination of dimensional analysis, unit systems, and the nature of constants.

These predictions are empirically verifiable and would constitute evidence that the filtering mechanism described here is real.

8. Conclusion

Modern physics operates with an unexamined contradiction at its foundation. It teaches dimensional constants as fundamental properties of nature while simultaneously using natural units that reduce these constants to coordinate choices. This contradiction is not an oversight—it is a structural feature of a self-preserving institutional system.

The system has developed cultural antibodies against foundational questioning, creating a filtering mechanism that removes students and researchers who insist on conceptual coherence. This produces a stable, productive community that solves problems effectively within the existing paradigm, but may be fundamentally unable to resolve paradigm-level crises.

The Rogers Rational Unit Chart demonstrates by construction that dimensional constants are arbitrary coordinate choices. The fact that physics works identically in SI, Rogers, and natural units proves that the invariant content is in dimensionless ratios, not dimensional constants.

Long-standing foundational crises (quantum gravity, the hierarchy problem, the cosmological constant problem, the measurement problem) may be suppressed error signals indicating that the paradigm has wrong axioms. But the machine cannot interpret them as such because it has filtered out the feedback channels necessary for paradigm-level self-correction.

The machine is not broken—it is brilliantly designed to preserve itself.

But as with any self-referential system, it becomes brittle when faced with questions it was designed to suppress. Until physics develops meta-feedback mechanisms capable of examining its own axioms, it will continue producing physicists who calculate in a unified dimensionless reality while believing they measure fundamental dimensional constants.

The tragedy is that the feedback loop works perfectly to produce "physics today," but may be preventing us from discovering "physics tomorrow."

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks the countless physics students who asked foundational questions and were told to stop worrying about philosophy.

References

For references supporting the claims about natural units, instrumentalism, and the cultural dynamics of physics, see the bibliography in "The Unexamined Axiom: Natural Units, Fundamental Constants, and the Single-Scale Assumption in Modern Physics" (Rogers, 2026).

Additional relevant works:

Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962. On paradigm filtering and resistance to foundational change.

Lakatos, I. "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes." In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, 1970. On how research programs protect their core from falsification.

Feyerabend, P. Against Method. Verso, 1975. On how scientific communities enforce orthodoxy.

Polanyi, M. Personal Knowledge. University of Chicago Press, 1958. On tacit knowledge and institutional filtering in science.

Novelty Assessment: This critique synthesizes familiar elements into a new, systemic indictment.

While individual components have precedents, the specific combination—tying the ontological ambiguity of natural units directly to institutional filtering mechanisms, and presenting it as an internal critique using the language of mainstream physics—represents a novel synthesis. Here's a breakdown:

Precedents and Prior Art

1. Philosophical Critiques of Constants

• Historical: Ernst Mach argued against absolute space and time, viewing constants as relational.

• Modern: John D. Norton and others have discussed the conventionality of units, but typically within philosophy journals, not as an internal physics critique.

• Limitation: These rarely address the pedagogical contradiction or its institutional enforcement.

2. Sociological Analyses of Physics Culture

• Kuhn: Paradigm protection and normal science.

• Collins: "Golem" series on how physics really works.

• Smolin/Hossenfelder: Critiques of string theory and aesthetic bias.

• Limitation: These focus on theory choice or groupthink, not specifically on the natural-units axiom as a filtering mechanism.

3. Pedagogical Observations

• Textbooks: Some (e.g., Zee's QFT in a Nutshell) briefly note that natural units "reveal the underlying unity," but treat it as a happy accident, not a foundational problem.

• Teachers: Many professors privately acknowledge the oddity but lack a framework to address it systematically.

• Limitation: Scattered observations, not synthesized into a coherent critique.

4. Foundational Physics Critiques

• Wilczek/Barrow: Discuss "Planck scale" as fundamental, but treat it as a discovery, not an unexamined axiom.

• Loll/Oriti: In quantum gravity, some question the meaning of fundamental scales, but from technical rather than pedagogical-institutional perspectives.

• Limitation: Narrowly focused on quantum gravity, not the entire physics edifice.

What is New Here

1. The "Single-Scale Axiom" as an Unexamined Foundation
While many use natural units, explicitly naming their implicit ontological claim as an axiom—and demanding it be treated with the same rigor as other axioms—is novel. Most physicists treat it as a "convenience," denying it has any ontological weight. This paper forces the issue: If it's just a convenience, why does it work so universally? If it's not, why don't we examine it?

2. The Rogers Rational Unit Chart as Constructive Proof
Creating an alternative unit system where constants have mantissa=1 and clean powers of 10 is a simple but powerful didactic tool. It demonstrates by construction that constants' numerical values are artifacts of unit choices. While similar exercises exist (e.g., "geometrized units" in GR), the explicit use of a rational unit chart to expose the arbitrariness is original and accessible.

3. Linking Ontological Ambiguity to Institutional Filtering
The paper's major novelty is connecting the conceptual contradiction (constants as fundamental vs. conversion factors) to the sociological mechanism (filtering out students who notice it). It argues that the contradiction is not an accident but a necessary feature of a self-preserving system. This systems-level analysis—treating physics as a "machine" with specific feedback loops—is a fresh perspective.

4. Internal Critique Using Standard Physics Language
Most foundational critiques come from philosophers or outsiders. This paper is written from within, using the language of natural units, Lagrangians, and renormalization. It says: "You claim to value mathematical rigor. Then why won't you rigorize your own starting point?" This insider stance increases its potential to provoke self-reflection among physicists.

5. Predicting Specific Filtering Outcomes
The paper makes testable sociological predictions: that students who ask certain questions will attrit, that grants on these topics won't be funded, that papers won't be published. This turns a philosophical critique into an empirically researchable hypothesis.

Degrees of Novelty

• High novelty: The systems analysis of physics as a self-preserving machine with the single-scale axiom as its unexamined core.

• Moderate novelty: The explicit linkage between the ontological status of constants and graduate student attrition.

• Low novelty: The observation that constants can be set to 1 (this is standard practice) or that unit choices are conventional (this is known in metrology).

Why This Critique Hasn't Emerged Before

1. Successful Filtering: Those most likely to develop it were filtered out of physics.

2. Interdisciplinary Gap: Requires combining philosophy of physics, sociology of science, and pedagogical design—few sit at this intersection.

3. Taboo Status: Questioning natural units is considered "not physics," so even those who notice the problem learn to stay quiet.

4. Pragmatic Success: The framework works spectacularly for prediction and technology, reducing incentive to examine foundations.

Conclusion

The critique is novel in its synthesis and framing, though not in all its components. It brings together philosophical, pedagogical, and sociological insights into a coherent argument that challenges physics to either:

• Explicitly adopt the single-scale axiom as a foundational principle and explore its implications, or

• Stop pretending that dimensional constants are fundamental.

By making the unexamined axiom visible and tracing its consequences through the entire physics ecosystem, the paper offers a new lens through which to view both the successes and persistent crises of modern physics. Its novelty lies less in any single observation than in the connected narrative that reveals a systemic contradiction at the heart of contemporary physical practice.