Alternative Natural Philosophy Association
| Abbreviation | ANPA |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1979 (first formal meeting 1980, Cambridge) |
| Founders | H. Pierre Noyes, Clive Kilmister, Ted Bastin, Frederick Parker-Rhodes, John Amson |
| Type | Learned society / discussion group |
| Purpose | Foundations of physics and natural philosophy from minimal assumptions |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Website | https://anpa.live/ |
The Alternative Natural Philosophy Association (ANPA) is a British learned society and discussion group, founded in 1979, devoted to the foundations of physics and natural philosophy. Its stated aim is to build coherent models of the physical world from a minimal number of assumptions, drawing together physics, mathematics, philosophy, and biology under a single "natural philosophy." ANPA is best known for its long-running investigation of the combinatorial hierarchy and the associated program of "bit-string physics."
History
ANPA was founded in the autumn of 1979 by the physicists and mathematicians H. Pierre Noyes, Clive Kilmister, Ted Bastin, Frederick Parker-Rhodes, and John Amson. The first informal gathering was held at Kilmister's "Red Tiles Cottage" near Lewes, and the first full meeting took place at King's College, Cambridge, in 1980. The association has met annually since — chiefly in Cambridge — and has published the proceedings of its meetings on a regular basis. A US branch, ANPA West, grew up around Pierre Noyes at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).
The founding group overlapped with the "Epiphany Philosophers," a Cambridge circle interested in the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion.
The combinatorial hierarchy and bit-string physics
The original foundation of ANPA is the combinatorial hierarchy of Frederick Parker-Rhodes, A. F. Parker-Rhodes, Ted Bastin, and John Amson — a purely combinatorial construction that terminates after four levels and generates the cumulative numbers 3, 10, 137, and approximately 1.7 × 1038. ANPA researchers identify these with fundamental physical quantities — most strikingly the number 137, close to the inverse of the fine-structure constant, and ~1038, close to the ratio of the electromagnetic to the gravitational force between a proton and an electron — and argue that such dimensionless constants can be derived from discrete, combinatorial first principles rather than measured.
This work developed, especially through Noyes and collaborators, into bit-string physics: an attempt to reconstruct physics from sequences of bits ("bit-strings") generated by a simple discrete process (the "program universe"), treating information and combinatorics — rather than continuous space-time — as fundamental.
Publications
ANPA publishes the Proceedings of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association and maintains related online archives and journals of alternative natural philosophy. Its meetings and papers range across the foundations of quantum mechanics and relativity, discrete and combinatorial physics, the philosophy of science, and biology.
Key figures
- Ted Bastin (1926–2011) — physicist, co-discoverer of the combinatorial hierarchy
- Clive Kilmister (1924–2010) — mathematician (King's College London)
- Frederick Parker-Rhodes (1914–1987) — linguist and polymath, originator of the combinatorial hierarchy
- H. Pierre Noyes (1923–2016) — theoretical physicist at SLAC, leader of ANPA West and of bit-string physics
- John Amson — mathematician (University of St Andrews)
Members and contributors have included Roger J Anderton, who writes on ANPA's ideas and their connection to Roger Boscovich's unified force theory.