Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong? by Georgina Parry

Tom ,

to be fair to John A. Wheeler my quote is from "Journey into Gravity and Space-time" written by him back in 1990. His views may have changed. He also said in that writing- "Even the word universe, bandied about in many a book, conceals a mountain of ignorance. We don't know whether what we call" the universe" is open or closed or whether that distinction -with growth of our understanding -may not itself fade away into thin air, into undefinability, into nonsense.

So while on the one hand saying that "Only by understanding gravity as the grip of spacetime on mass, and mass on spacetime, can we comprehend even the first thing about the machinery of the world-" which sounds very certain -to me-, he is being very open minded about the realm itself in which the physics is occurring.

Georgina,

The problem with the issue of gravity started long before Einstein became involved. From what was known about electromagnetic (EM) fields, the propagated kind, individual electric charges and magnets, Einstein could not reconcile how any of these could accomplish the universal attraction of all objects that possess what is termed mass.

Heaviside did not help the propagated EM side of the argument, he transformed Maxwell's equations such that they fit what scientists of his era knew about these fields. It is an assumption that the Heaviside transforms are correct, and this has been carried forward to the present. There are many papers that reveal that Maxwell's original equations allowed an EM structure where both fields were not transverse, they supported a longitudinal element. With one of the EM fields aligned with the axis of propagation it is possible to identify an EM field structure that presents an attractant only force to another field of the same type.

The scientific community, by accepting Einstein's curved space-time theory of gravity, stuck their heads into a Lewis Carroll rabbit hole where bizarre theories beget bizarre theories. Einstein is credited with the quote, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Can anyone conclude Einstein's curved space-time theory of gravity is in any way simple? Your essay rejects the assumption that curved space-time is the cause of gravity.

Having an EM field structure would make it easy to understand the mechanism of the force of gravity, such that it could be taught at the high school science level.

Georgina, just for curiosity, have you read Lancelot Law Whyte's article on "Chirality?" (Leonardo, Vol. 8, pp 245-248 Pergamon Press 1975)

Chirality

Frank,

I have not only rejected curved space-time as the cause of gravity. I have explained why that must be so. As space-time is the product of processing received data and not the foundational external reality. Explanation of how that conclusion is reached can be found in the essay. As it is not space-time that is curved in foundational reality it can't be affecting bodies of matter.

I have not just left a void when discounting the curved space-time causal explanation. I later explained that the universal motion of all bodies must affect the environment of space in Object reality.( Don't remember my exact words without referring back to it) That can affect the motion of other bodies and affects the path of the light, giving the effects of gravitational attraction and curved space-time. So you can see from that that I don't think it is what the light is doing that is causing gravity either.It -is- the alteration of the environment, which the light is also travelling through; and that environment is not within space-time, but uni-temporal space.

Dear Wilhelmus,

thank you for reading my essay.I do appreciate your positive remarks about it. Glad you found some ideas in it that resonate with your own thinking.I look forward to reading your own essay when it appears.

Hi J.C. N. Smith,

Can't thank you enough for your response to my essay. I am sorry if my reply was rather brief and to the point of your question.

I like Max Tegmark's "Shut up and calculate " paper very much. It contains many quotable words of wisdom as well as diverse ideas that I find appealing. I have learned from it that the universe can be thought about in many more ways than I had imagined; and learned that ideas I had considered nonsense I had formerly not been thinking about in ways that made sense of them.

I have realised that I mustn't be too hasty to pass judgement because sensible or nonsense, right or wrong, can be due to the quantity/quality/style of information or explanation accessed and the viewpoint of the thinker- and not the idea itself. Even if ideas turn out to be wrong they can be stepping stones to new and better ideas. Even if they have to be thrown on the junk pile they are useful in the way Edison's failed experiments were. "Results, why man I have gotten lots of results. I know several thousand things that won't work." Thomas Edison. That is honest progress and we can all participate.

Hi Georgina,

Not a problem; you've been busier than the proverbial woman on crutches in a revolving door replying to the many interesting posts which your essay has generated.

I agree with your comments above about not being too hasty to pass judgement.

"The way to converge with each other is to converge upon the truth." -- David Deutsch, 'The Beginning of Infinity,' p. 257. (You commented favorably on this quote elsewhere.)

Which of course raises the question, what is truth? I personally take truth (in the context of science) to be the best available explanation for observed phenomena, with the understanding that it will remain so only until someone offers a better, more comprehensive explanation, which presumably would then subsume all previous "best explanations." Little by little, step by step, I think we're sneaking up on it, with a little help from our friends.

Cheers,

jcns

Dear Georgina,

Your own essay, which is brilliant, by the way and will receive a great rating from me, argues over and over again, even with your quotes from others for my argument. And I do believe without exception, that Infinity, or Endlessness is Cruel and Malicious. I agree, as it is the ultimate mental jail, we are trapped within. If you are claustrophobic, you are in trouble. However there is one release value, and that is the endless growth of "Knowledge", which finite sentiency is forever capable of. And must be, to justify the paradox of the finite and the infinite. Or said another way, this paradox is the essence of existence itself. As it could be no other way.

Knowledge is insatiable, due to the absolute fact that infinity is insatiable. Infinity just as knowledge is forever a ponderable and yes cruel and malicious fact - in fact. It is the one thing that assails me with fear of the trapped nature I find myself in. With exception, if I give up to the infinite, then I do not think anymore, and am no longer trapped. It is a duplicitous, and paradoxical reality, I cannot escape.

If I could escape then infinity is no more than a false and finite misnomer, and that is not possible, by its own very real nature.

I hope this explains my position in a way that marries in with your thesis, as your thesis is not in conflict, from my perspective.

It is what it is...

I wish you great success, deeply and sincerely. Albeit your work, already speaks to that fact.

Cheers, Russ

PS... I have a series of Essay's @ www.otterthink.wordpress.com Perhaps they will shed some additional thoughts as to why I believe, as I do.

Compared to mine, yours is a meticulously logical approach to the incompatibilities of GR and QM. It is easy at the surface but layers in complexity. I'll delve deeper.

Georgina,

I mentioned Lancelot Law Whyte's publication Chirality to illustrate one of the unexplained characteristics of the universe that was influencing his thinking and writings.

An individual that assembled information contained in his diaries made this statement, "The diaries were dedicated to the recording of his progress on this great task, not to the writing of his books. They were intense, personal, at times heartbreaking, written for a future biographer, an account of the daily joys and sufferings of a great mind nearing a universal truth. As the reader will see shortly, they are quite overwhelming. They are organically linked with the emerging grand unified theory as he was also developing a new way of thinking, which has considerable dependence on the unconscious. One can actually learn to use his method by simply reading what he had to say about it."

The diaries of Lancelot Law Whyte

Your writings suggest you are using this "new way of thinking," but this manner of thinking is not really new, probably been around as long as our species has existed. What is new to each individual that uses it is realizing it is an actual mental tool that can be exploited.

Dear Russ,

thank you for reading my essay and for your very kind remarks. I am glad you liked it and found it compatible with your own way of thinking. Thanks too for the further explanation of your thoughts and your web address.

Frank,

thank you for the links. I had not read the paper on chirality before but was familiar with the subject of chirality from the study of biochemistry, as part of my degree. I have looked at the review of the book about the diaries of Lancelot Law Whyte. He does sound like an interesting individual, doing interesting and broad research. Without reading more I could not say how much overlap in our thinking there is but it does sound like he is taking a holistic multi-disciplinary approach. That kind of approach, looking at the "big picture" is going to be helpful to science in my opinion. There is a hint of that near the end of my essay.

Georgina,

I am fairly certain that one cannot exploit the ability of the unconscious to logically reorder what we know without exposing our minds to multidisciplinary material.

I have known about the double helix of DNA for a long time, but it is just recent that I learned that many of the chemical structures in our body have helical/chiral properties. From the somewhat dated Whyte article, one can conclude, that, within the universe, helicity and spin extend from large galactic formations, down to diverse biological forms, and further down to atomic structures. It seems logical to me that some influence is responsible for this fairly uniform characteristic, and I can't help thinking that the mechanism that creates the force of gravity is involved.

I did not know Whyte was working on a "Geometrical Model of Electromagnetism," Ch 5, May 23, 1969, until I read his diaries several days ago.

Whyte Diary Ch 5

My essay is about a specific characteristic of electromagnetism presented in a geometric form.

I get periodic emails from the Wolfram group about cellular automata. I suspect I get the emails because I did send an email to Wolfram via his website referencing my IEEE paper, and I know my web site received a couple of hits from a Wolfram specific server. Whether Wolfram himself read my paper I do not know.

And yes, your Object Reality section points to the big picture. You quote Feynman, who considers everything being run from behind the scenes by some organisation, the same physical laws. That fits in nicely with Whyte's article on Chirality. There is a physical law and associated mechanism that produces the uniformity of chirality in so many structures.

And there is a left hand bias.

Hi J.C.N.Smith,

you ask what is truth?

I would like to separate truth from truthfulness.

I think we can have greater and lesser degrees of truthfulness but no access to absolute truth. Complete or absolute truth is not a particular viewpoint (physical perspective or subjective opinion or relative measurement). Absolute truth has correspondence to all possible measurements and physical perspectives of some thing or event, from all directions, scales and distances and times and even different observer kinds. It is the whole elephant,seen every-way, so to speak not any part or individual glimpse.What is or was in every possible way it could be described.

Science ought to aim for a high level of truthfulness in the representations of reality that are constructed, which is good but partial correspondence with what is or has existed.

Truthfulness is increased by having good experimental designs, honesty, having more data from more varied experiments and checking for all factors that could influence results, ie generating more complete and reliable information. That in turn allows more reliable conclusions to be drawn. Theory can be examined for its fit and modified or discarded if necessary. Rather than relying on a single accurate viewpoint from repetition of the same or very similar experiment and drawing strong conclusions from the replicated partial information that has been generated.

If all of the different reliable experimental results can be accounted for because they correspond to aspects of a coherent explanatory framework then it is likely that that framework has truthfulness. Though it is still only a model of reality and not reality itself and so can not be the whole or absolute truth. I agree with you in that we can get closer and closer, we can sneak up on it, but never catch it. Even the very best model has to be an incomplete representation.

I still might not have made that differentiation clear.

The truth is in the Object reality.It is the structures and patterns and their relationships.Former iterations being the home of historical truth.It is independent of human thought about it or description of it.

Any physical viewpoint, or opinion, or measurement, (only) has a relationship to the truth, that is what I meant by correspondence. It isn't the absolute truth itself.

Several different observers can give their own accurate accounts, according to their perspective. All of those accounts can be different and seemingly contradictory. All can correspond to foundational truth, the source of the data they have used for their personal representation of reality. So all are truthful.

There are far more perceptions and measurements that -could be- made than the few that are selected and from which a representation of reality is constructed. The greater the amount of reliable data that is available, and the higher the quality of the data, the greater is the likelihood there is a high level of truthfulness in the fabrication made from it.

Maximising truthfulness should be the aim. There shouldn't be a presumption that the truth itself is known on the basis of scant, partial evidence.Conspiring against that aim are two human biases: the tendency to draw strong conclusions from incomplete information, ie. "what you see is all there is" bias, which was mentioned in the essay, -and- the tendency to form coherent causal stories from unrelated facts,ie. "the narrative fallacy". Two of many human biases that Daniel Kahneman identifies in his book "Thinking fast and Slow" -see the essay references.

Hi Georgina,

"It is the whole elephant, seen every-way, so to speak not any part or individual glimpse."

That perfectly answers the question "what is truth?" for me. Thank you for your insightful reply. Totally agree. Science seems to involve the incremental sneaking up on ever better descriptions of, and explanations for, the elephant's nature, while remaining wary of falling prey to the illusion (mirage?) that, regardless of how close we may think we've come, we've finally succeeded in capturing it perfectly. If we ever did that, we'd be out of a job, and that would spoil the fun!

jcns

Dear J.C. N. Smith,

I'm glad the elephant analogy works for you. It is insufficient on its own though because it seems to imply that the elephant has to be detected in some way to be the truth. Which is not so.

It can still be truth, but unknown, even if there is no observation or description of it. Also as I said there are many more possible observations and measurements, giving truthful but partial information, than are actually selected:Also many more different but truthful descriptions that might be found. Sorry for my earlier rambling replies.I was trying to pin it down.

Yes, I think you have nicely summarised the role of science.I don't think it should ever be declaring the truth but continually finding what is truthful and not truthful to help piece together a better understanding of nature.

Here is the high definition version of diagram 1. used in the essay.

Some quality was lost putting it into the text. All of the words can be clearly seen on this pdf. Easy to print out and turn around.Attachment #1: RICP3D_high_def_essay_version..pdf

Hi Georgina,

I read and truly enjoyed your entry. You identify and elaborate on what is, in my opinion, one of the main problem in research today. One that has nothing to do with the intelligence and technical skills of scientists but every thing to do with their mindset.

There are two main approaches to theoretical physics. One is to branch out from the assumptions of current theories, which is what that vast majority of researchers do (and should do). The other implies exploring the consequences of an original axiom set.

Those who follow the second approach are people who are willing to question the very foundation of science, even throw out the window, if necessary, theories who have proven to be successful. Those are the people who are thinking outside the box. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to think outside the box for whose mind has been trained to think in certain ways. Do we need to live outside the box, outside of consensus, to allow our minds to see approaches that would otherwise be dismissed? Do we need to live outside the box to think outside the box? History suggests that innovations come from people who actually lived outside the box (who later created new boxes for generations of physicists).

Living outside the box must certainly help setting up the creative mindset needed for the second approach.

I would like my comment with the following. A few years back, I saw a documentary which was, at least in part, discussing how biologists and engineer tried to develop a harness that frogs in the wild would not slip out of (the harness was necessary to attach a tracking device). After months of failed attempts by the scientists and engineers to create a harness frogs wouldn't shed, the problem was submitted to a fashion designer. The fashion designer solved the problem in a matter of days. So does one need to live outside the box to think outside the box? You tell me.

Hi Daniel,

The frog story is amusing, I can imagine the researcher's frustration.

In "Teach your child how to think" Edward de Bono wrote: "Many people ask is there an 'ideal' type of thinking that can be used for all occasions. The answer is that there is not.", he then talks about a golfers many different golf clubs, the gears on a car and how a saw and glue have contradictory functions but are both useful. He writes "Thinking behaviour will often require an ability to switch methods as appropriate."

The very close relationship of modern physics and mathematics has led to predominately black and white thinking and the history of science has been rather adversarial. Specifically -How- to think and the diversity of ways that a person -can- think, is not generally taught in schools or universities. Thinking ability is assumed to be something that will just happen, is a natural gift or deficit and doesn't need cultivation. Edward de Bono strongly believes that thinking can be taught. He has given presentations on thinking techniques to companies, his ideas are used in some very large companies today and there are corporate training courses based upon his ideas. If this happens in business it could also happen within science establishments.

The usefulness of bringing together people from different disciplines or walks of life is that they are already thinking in different ways. So rather than having one versatile mind working on a problem the versatility and enhanced effectiveness comes from the combined mindsets of different people. The internet ability to bring people together can be helpful in this way. FQXi is doing this, as illustrated by the variety of talks given during its last conference.

So the answer, I think, is -No one does not have to be outside the box to think outside the box because anyone could learn other ways of thinking. However it might be quicker and easier to match the existing thinking skills and experience of someone to the problem. As illustrated by your wonderful frog harness story.

I'm glad you liked my essay, thank you.