Drew Farwell

Drew Farwell is a research author in the philosophy and foundations of physics, writing for Axiom Science. His work focuses on the assumptions that sit beneath modern physical theory: identity, continuity, divisibility, admissibility, reconstruction, and the physical cost of treating something as “one thing” through time.

Farwell’s central concern is not that modern physics has failed. Quite the opposite. Newtonian mechanics, relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and cosmology work with extraordinary precision across their proper domains. His work begins where those domains begin to strain: near singularities, at the Planck scale, in quantum measurement, in cosmological reconstruction, and anywhere mathematical limits are extended toward zero, infinity, or exact sameness.

His recent writing develops the argument that mathematical equality and physical identity are not the same thing. In mathematics, A = A is exact because symbols do not age, interact, decay, fracture, dissolve, or remember. Physical systems do. They exist through time, entropy, interaction, finite resolution, and transformation. What remains “the same thing” in physics is usually not exact identity, but persistence within a tolerance: coherence maintained long enough to justify the description being used.

This perspective leads to a broader research program built around a simple question:

What has to be physically true before the mathematics is allowed to mean what we say it means?

From that question follow several related themes: continuity may be an earned approximation rather than a primitive fact; division and recombination may carry irreducible energetic, entropic, informational, and boundary costs; identity may need to be treated as an admissible regime rather than an automatic assumption; and some singularities or infinities may be warning signs that a model has extended an operation beyond physical support.

Farwell’s current work includes essays and papers on physical non-identity, the cost of maintaining coherence, Planck-scale admissibility, reconstruction models, and the possibility that some unresolved features in cosmology may arise from overextended assumptions about continuity, additivity, and reconstruction rather than from entirely new substances or fields. These ideas are exploratory and provisional, intended not as a finished theory of everything, but as a disciplined attempt to inspect the assumptions beneath the theories that already work.

His book, A ≠ A: The Infinite Insanity of Identity, introduces the original form of this argument and explores the consequences of relaxing exact identity and continuity as physical assumptions.

A ≠ A: The Infinite Insanity of Identity is available on Amazon:
https://a.co/d/39diai7