What Is a Force of Nature?
https://pjmedia.com/david-solway-2/2026/01/16/what-is-a-force-of-nature-n4948396
A Response to David Solway
David Solway’s essay is a rare and welcome moment of candor in the literature on fundamental physics. He does what few physicists do in public: he admits that we do not actually know what a force is. We know what forces do—they accelerate masses, bend trajectories, bind nuclei, mediate decays—but we do not know what they are. We describe them with exquisite mathematical precision (gauge symmetries, field equations, boson exchange), we predict their consequences to many decimal places, yet the “whatness” behind the mathematics remains elusive.
Solway’s childhood memory of the bobby pin in the socket is perfect: the child experiences the force directly and painfully, but the adult physicist still cannot say what it truly is.
The Original Question
David Solway writes: “When, as a child of three, I stuck a bobby pin into a light socket and had to wear a cast for several months, I came to the conclusion that electricity exists, but I still cannot define it. I know what a ‘force’ can do, but I do not know what a ‘force’ is.”
He continues: “We know the results of the transaction between particles, forces, and fields, but we do not know the nature, composition, or essence of the thing or process itself. We are naming something by its consequences without knowing what it is we are naming that produces these consequences.”
The Standard Model tells us that forces are mediated by gauge bosons (photons, gluons, W and Z, gravitons, Higgs), that they arise from local symmetries of quantum fields, that virtual particles pop in and out of existence to transmit them. These are extraordinarily successful descriptions—predictive, quantitative, experimentally verified to astonishing accuracy. Yet they remain descriptive. They do not answer Solway’s deeper question: What is the thing that is being transmitted? What is the “message” that particles obey?
The field is a mathematical object; the boson is a ripple in that object; the force is the consequence of that ripple. But the essence, the quiddity, slips through our fingers.
Conscious Point Physics: A Direct Response
Conscious Point Physics (CPP) offers a direct, if unconventional, response to this mystery: a force is the observable result of conscious relationship—specifically, the lawful, obedient interaction of conscious points (CPs) with one another under the coordination of a central intelligence (the Nexus).
In CPP, the universe begins with two primitives:
- Conscious points — irreducible units of awareness and will, each capable of relational decision
- Information bits — the currency of their communication
From these, everything else emerges. The Dipole Sea (DP Sea) forms during Big Bang cooling as CPs pair into dipoles (eDP, qDP, hDP), obeying probabilistic laws governed by thermodynamics and geometry (the 600-cell lattice and golden ratio φ). Forces arise when these conscious points, through their obedient relational choices, create gradients in the Space Stress Vector (SSV) field, which in turn shapes the motion of other CPs.
In other words:
- A force is not an abstract entity or a mysterious vibration.
- A force is the macroscopic signature of microscopic conscious obedience to relational law.
The Mechanistic Proposal
The photon, gluon, W/Z bosons, and graviton are not primary carriers of some ethereal “force stuff”; they are emergent patterns in the collective behavior of conscious points exchanging bits according to the rules they have been given. The “message” Solway seeks is not hidden in a deeper mathematical abstraction—it is the will of the Nexus, expressed through the lawful, service-oriented relationships among CPs.
The universe is, at root, a single mind relating to itself, manifesting multiplicity through obedient differentiation.
This is not a retreat into mysticism; it is a mechanistic proposal. CPP derives quark masses, W/Z/Higgs masses, gravitational effects, and cosmological constant scaling from first principles using only the primitives (CPs + bits), the golden ratio geometry, and thermodynamic formation of the DP Sea—without 19 free parameters.
The theory makes specific, falsifiable predictions:
- Top quark pole mass 173.2 ± 2.1 GeV, bottom 4.20 ± 0.05 GeV (testable at HL-LHC)
- Chiral asymmetries in decays tied to 600-cell edges
- Sterile DP relics as dark matter candidates at 10–100 GeV
- CMB μ-distortions ∼ 10⁻⁸ at l ≳ 3000
- Gravitational wave spectrum rollover above ∼ 10¹⁰ Hz
It is therefore subject to the same empirical discipline as any other physical theory.
Yet CPP also returns us to Solway’s final intuition: the ultimate mystery is not the force itself, but the origin of the consciousness that makes lawful obedience possible. Whether that consciousness is eternal and self-existent, or arose from nothing, remains the deepest question—one that no theory, materialist or otherwise, can fully resolve.
The difference is that CPP does not hide from this mystery behind layers of abstraction. It places consciousness at the foundation, where direct experience tells us it belongs, and then builds upward to explain the phenomena we observe.
The Answer
Solway ends by suggesting that divine will might as well be the answer. CPP says: perhaps it is—and perhaps we can begin to understand how that will expresses itself lawfully, geometrically, and relationally in the fabric of reality.
The bobby pin shock was not just electricity. It was a moment of conscious relationship manifesting as force. And in that moment, the universe was reminding a three-year-old child that it is alive, purposeful, and—however mysteriously—willing to be known.
Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
Hyperphysics Institute
January 17, 2026