Crisis in Physics. Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong? by Alexander G. Kyriakos

Dear Alexander,

Thank you for a very interesting and thought-provoking essay. I found much in your essay to like. As a result of what probably is my own shortcoming, however, I was left without a clear concept of exactly what conclusion(s) you hope readers will take away from your essay.

You were absolutely on target to cite Smolin's book 'The Trouble With Physics' in your opening passages; in fact, that book might well serve as the sub-text for this entire essay competition. In far too many regards, it does appear that physics is in crisis.

I have focused my own attention on one particular point made in Smolin's book where he writes, 'More and more, I have the feeling that quantum theory and general relativity are both deeply wrong about the nature of time. It is not enough to combine them. There is a deeper problem, perhaps going back to the beginning of physics.' (p.256)

I am in total agreement with Smolin on this crucial point, and I have addressed this issue in several of my own essays, including the one submitted to this competition, Rethinking a Key Assumption About the Nature of Time and in another essay, Toward a Helpful Paradigm for the Nature of Time. Should you have an opportunity to read them I'd welcome your comments.

If you could please add a posting here with a concise statement of the message you wish readers of your essay to take away from it I would be deeply grateful. Thank you. And good luck in the competition!

jcns

Dear Doctor Kyriakos,

Please under no circumstances take any of my following remarks personally. I enjoyed reading your essay, but while your assertion that "Simplistically, we can say that science is a method of obtaining the answer to a question in order to gain some benefit for people" I think that realistically, science has always been a business. The only difference between any sciences practiced today from previous scientific projects, is that government sponsorship is now required to fund them rather than private expenditure. CERN has spent $10 billion so far and is likely to keep at least 3,000 scientists gainfully employed for at least the next five years regardless of whether they actually find the path of the Higgs boson particle or not. The only real crisis in physics today is finding a wealthy organization to bill.

May I support icns? I got the impression the essay ends with suggested equations after it begun with the definitely correct statement that several physicists used the expression "crisis of physics" or "crisis of modern physics". I wonder why nobody so far asked whether or not that crisis relates to the so called foundational crisis of mathematics.

Eckard

Dear J. C. N.!

Thank you for your favorable response to my essays, and for the interesting questions.

Do you write: «however, I was left without a clear concept of exactly what conclusion (s) you hope readers will take away from your essay». Maybe you're right and I had to point out that to overcome the crisis we must discard neo-positivistic ("Babylonian", instrumentalistic, algorithmic, etc.) approach and «going back to the beginning of physics» (as said Smolin), that is, go to a materialistic (realistic, "Greek", axiomatic) approach. I thought it is clear from my essay, and perhaps I made a mistake.

I think you have focused your attention on a very important point - about the nature of time. If we add to this problem the space, it is probably the most important concepts of physics. And I think that the crisis (as you write in your article) «require us to abandon an unspoken assumption that the operational definition is the final word of science on the nature of time» and, I will add, space. I think that the closest to reality and common sense is the analysis of the concepts of space and time, which are contained in the well-known works of Poincare about the basics of science.

Thank you and success to you.

-----------------------------------------

Dear Joe!

I can agree with you that realistically, science is TODAY a business. But I think that this was not always so. Until the 20th century, many scientists do not earn money on science, and lived at his own expense. These are the all the Greek and Roman scholars, all scholars of the Middle Ages and modern times, until the scientific revolution in the late 19th century.

Thank you

Dear Eckard!

As said J.W. Gibbs: «Mathematics is a language." Language, including mathematics, can not be the cause of the crisis in physics: the language has its own rules of grammar, and if they are not broken, all is well.

However, I think that math is relevant to the crisis in physics in the other. On the basis of a positivistic ("Babylonian") approach, all that is expressed mathematically, a priori can be considered as the really existing in nature (see the superstring, 10 and 26 dimensions of space-time, multiverses, supersymmetric particles, and much, much more). In order to prove that it exists or not exists, theoretical physicists propose to build expensive accelerators, telescopes, etc. But if the superstrings and others will not be detected, scientists do not risk anything: they can simply say that the hypothesis is not justified.

Axiomatic physics includes frames, beyond which all mathematical models are only human imagination. This system describes only what is in accordance with the existing picture of the world, and this picture is only one (see the quotation of Max Planck and Schrödinger in my essay).

Thank you

Dear Alexander,

Josiah Willard Gibbs is most famous - at least to engineers like me - for a finitary correction in 1899 concerning trigonometric series that was already described by Wilbraham fifty years before Gibbs by means of the continuity program, cf. D. Spalt "Vom Mythos der Mathematischen Vernunft", Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft 1987.

I recall that the final version of Maxwell's equations goes back to Gibbs and and independently to Heaviside. If I understood Phipps correctly, the preference of their variant over Hertz's is crucial. I wonder if this preference was not given before 1899.

Therefore I would like to partially question your conclusion that "mathematics cannot be the cause of the crisis in physics" because "all is well" if its rules are not broken. Doesn't foundational crisis of mathematics mean that most basic rules are to be questioned?

While Platonists believe that the laws of science are not invented but found, Dedekind called numbers human creations. What is your opinion concerning the nonlinear quantum field theory that you are suggesting? Is it revealed or fabricated? Would "Babylonians" like Feynman say this doesn't matter?

Incidentally, you made me aware of the Prespacetime Journal. Thank you.

Eckard

Dear Eckard!

Regarding your question "Doesn't foundational crisis of mathematics mean that most basic rules are to be questioned?» I think that physics and mathematics is not the same thing. Besides, I do not know whether there is a crisis in mathematics. I think there is a crisis of use of mathematics.

Regarding your questions «What is your opinion concerning the nonlinear quantum field theory that you are suggesting? Is it revealed or fabricated? Would "Babylonians" like Feynman say this doesn't matter? »I can say briefly following.

My theory is the development (evolution) of a unified theory of matter of J.J. Thomson and Lorentz, which is based on electromagnetic (EM) theory of Maxwell-Lorentz. This theory had two major (and understandable) shortcomings: it was non-quantum and linear. Modern quantum theory is quantum, and particle creation indicates that quantum theory must be nonlinear ( though it continues artificially is built on the basis of a linear vector space of Hilbert).

Towards the equations of Lorentz-Maxwell without sources I have added: a) the Planck and de Broglie postulates of quantization of EM field, and b) my postulate of self-action of EM field , i.e. postulate of non-linearity. Based on these postulates are derived 1) linear Dirac equations of fundamental massive leptons - electron-positron and neutrino; 2) their nonlinear prototypes; 3) Yang-Mills equations for hadrons as composite particles, which consist of two or three quarks.

What is new here: 1) this theory is much easier than the Standard Model, since all the equations are derived consistently from the same axioms system; 2) it shows that the linear quantum theory is approximation of non-linear theory; 3) that all the peculiarities of the modern theory (Copenhagens and all others) are explained as a consequence of the nonlinearity theory. Therefore, "the "Babylonians" can not say that this doesn't matter".

Alexander

Dear Alexander,

Engineers like me are seeing linearity the most useful approximation of reality. There is nothing wrong with linearity as long as one is aware of some limitations to the approximation. A linear vector space should at least include the actual infinity as to be equivalent to non-linear models.

By the way, the expression "foundational crisis of mathematics" was frequently used in the beginning of the 20th century. Meanwhile, mathematicians consider the crisis overcome. The predominantly ruling theory is ZFC. However, while already Adolf Fraenkel (the F of ZFC) admitted in 1923 that Georg Cantor's naive set theory is untenable, David Hilbert still appreciated Cantor's paradise in 1925. As there is no twin paradox, there is no crisis of mathematics. Everybody who speaks of a crisis of mathematiis or of physics risks to be suspected a crank.

Eckard

Alexander,

A clear sighted essay.

I do wonder though, if this dichotomy of inductive vs. deductive reasoning is two sides of the same coin? The interaction between linear and non-linear systems,like order coalescing out of chaotic states and then projecting back out onto them. Roots of induction coming to a conclusive trunk, then branching back out deductively.

I'm writing this on a phone and intend to develop some of these relations between physical and logical systems further,because you do go to the conceptual heart of the problem, but trying both write on this and think what I'm trying to say is impossible.

Dear Alexander Kyriakos,

I enjoyed reading about the history of science, the problems, and opinions of various scientists along the way. Very clear and well written.

I think it is an interesting question whether the world is ideal but that is obscured by noise because there is so much going on? Or it is really just messy but some pattern emerges from the mess. Maybe its both.

I was a little puzzled at the end as I was not sure if all of the preceding essay was just building up to your mathematics at the end.

A verbal conclusion or short summary would have been helpful.

Thank you for sharing your thought provoking essay. Good luck in the competition.

Alexander,

Having read through your essay a number of times, I would have to say it does give a very effective overview of the situation in physics today and much of how we have arrived to this point. I agree with the others you don't present a clear solution, but than if there was one, we wouldn't be in this quandary. So your only real fault in that case is due to having clearly enough presented the problem, that the lack of a firm solution seems a letdown. Personally I am not a physicist and only come to the field in search of answers to questions in other fields. What I found were some of the very same habits of mind clouding clear thinking which permeate most other disciplines. Since I do come to the table with a clean slate and some would argue, an empty mind, my solution to what ails physics is quite basic. I think we are so intellectually wrapped up in the effect of time, the sequence of events defining our lives, that we overlook the basic physical process creating it. Rather than time being a vector from past to future, mathematically enshrined as ever more accurate measurements, it is the changing configuration of what exists, that turns future potential into past circumstance. To wit, the earth doesn't travel some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Time, then, is an effect of action, rate of change. This makes it similar to temperature, rather than space. I go into this in my own entry, so I won't repeat the various points here.

One argument I forgot to add in that paper was about space being fundamental, rather than just a measure; Centrifugal force suggests space is an inherent equilibrium state. Consider being on an astroid in the deepest regions of space. Would you know it is spinning, if there were no outside references? Say you had poor eyesight, would you be safe, not seeing other markers, but if you pulled out your glasses and saw stars circling rapidly above you, would you then be in danger of being thrown off?

Money in physics is made by changing experience from what is natural, although truth (and reality) are FUNDAMENTALLY found/present in and with natural experience.

Dear Georgina!

Thank you for your wish of good luck in the contest.

Regarding to your comments «A verbal conclusion or short summary would have been helpful», I note that some colleagues have also expressed this wish. But what is that I have not said in my essay?

Famous scholars argue that in the fundamental physics arose a crisis. Therefore, a question arise: «Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?». Famous scientists (Planck, Schrödinger, Popper and others) argue that the crisis arose because of a paradigm shift in the methodology of physics. I suggested to eliminate the crisis to go to the old paradigm - to the materialistic ("Greek" or axiomatic) paradigm.

Maybe my colleagues would like that I answer the question: "How to force the scientific community to change the paradigm?". I have no answer to this question.

And how would they answer?

Alexander

Dear Alexander,

A conclusion would have just distilled something particularly important that you wanted to convey and tied it up nicely. Like a bow on a parcel, unnecessary but making it special and finished. What you have just written in your reply would have done nicely.

I have just read your reply to Eckard. I now think you may have been demonstrating what can be done using the different paradigm. Its practicality. So rather than a conclusion or summary you had the grand finale. Unfortunately that was not obvious to me, which is my shortcoming. Not really understanding the reason for the end of the essay at the time was only a minor problem. Overall I found it a very enjoyable and interesting and relevant essay. I hope you get lots of appreciative readers.

Dear Alexander,

Having read your essay again, I do better understand its strong and its weak points. I agree with a lot of what you quoted. You also made a clear distinction between perfect Euclidean reasoning and the presently preferred unrealistic instrumentalist tower of Babel. You are certainly correct when complaining "we do not know ... the physical meaning ... of non-commutativity. Did you read my last essay ? I see non-commutativity an artifact of Heaviside's trick.

What about axiomatic QFT, I feel reminded of Hilbert's failed attempt to apply his axiomatic method on physics. You referred to three principles: 1 QM, 2 Relativity, 3 Causality. While I have arguments to trust in 3, 2 has been questioned by hundreds of experts, and 1 is not even understandable.

Good luck,

Eckard

Dear Kyriakos

Yasu. I enjoyed both parts of your paper. The historical approach explaining the pragmatic 'shut up and calculate!" or 'Babylonian' approach to QM, and how a systematic axiomatic 'Greek' approach is needed. I very much agree with you there.

I am in no position to evaluate the algebraic axioms you presented in the second part of your paper, except for three observations:

1-Since it is a 'Greek' method a geometrical approach rather than an algebraic one would have been best - I know it is difficult but is it possible? Maxwell tried to explain E/M in a mechanical model

2- I would have preferred the amalgamation of (h) with E/M in the first axiom. I do not know how to do that, but I think that is basic.

3- I have a serious problem with the concept of a 'photon particle', but liked your idea of photon rotation to lock in a new position to create mass. Why not extend this into the surrounding 'photons' of a 'sea of photons' and thus define gravity?

That is what I have done in my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory where the geometrical twisting or rotation of the universal dielectric nodes create quantum phase, local photon intensity and polarization. When neighboring nodes are made to twist so that their poles are opposite they lock in place (as in your theory) creating a particle with mass. An explanation of gravity as the effect of the unwinding of twisting immediately follows. Neutrino description as a twisting of the field of nodes is also one of the ideas in my paper.

I think this approach, using a physical model to embody the situation and use it to find answers, (much like a graphic pencil-and paper solution to vector addition), or the use of an abacus where the position of beads represent arithmetic calculations, may be a pioneering alternative to the Babylonian and Greek methods in physics: a 'Chinese' or if you prefer a 'Japanese' method. If the universe is such a self-assembling '3D abacus' (as in my BU model) such a method may well be the nearest we can get to understand both qualitatively and quantitatively the way Nature actually operates!

This model can be described mathematically by discrete calculus. But expressed as a quantum computer using some sort of yet-to-be-built hardware the (BU) model may yield the results of present-day physics and perhaps new insights and quantitative predictions about physics we have not dreamed of yet. I will be honored if you read and comment on my (BU) paper as well as my fqxi essay 'Fix Physics!'

Best of luck

Vladimir

Dear Vladimir! Yasu!

Thank you for your interest in my essay.

I met with your (BU) paper as well as with fqxi essay 'Fix Physics!'. I can not comment on these works in detail, because it requires a lot of time. I will say very briefly.

I think, BEAUTIFUL UNIVERSE is a very correct statement of the general and specific problems in physics. Your «proposal to reconstruct physics from simple physically realistic first principles» is the goal of my work in physics. The result of this work is my non-linear theory, where it is possible to find answers to your questions, as well as a concrete embodiment of many of your suggestions. Unfortunately, it is impossible to comment on all the details here. Four pages of the theory outlined in my FQXI 2012 ESSAY are simply the content of the theory; full theory takes about 300-350 pages.

The same applies to "Fix Physics!" essay. Your questions are very serious and important. And my theory is an attempt to answer them. On the question "WHY CHANGE IN PHYSICS IS NECESSARY", I tried very briefly to respond in my FQXI-2012 essay. Answers to "SEVEN FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS" are also contained in the nonlinear theory.

Regarding the composition of the system of axioms is known, it can be different. The composition that I suggested I call the "minimal", i.e. such as it is necessary and sufficient in the general sense.

You are asking «Why not extend this into the surrounding 'photons' of a 'sea of photons' and thus define gravity? I'm doing it now (in Prespacetime Journal just published two articles on this subject and I hope it will be continued.)

Good luck.

Alexander

All modern theoretical thermodynamics are wrong.

Read:

"Физический смысл адиабатных процессов" ("The physical meaning of adiabatic processes") (http://yadi.sk/d/pi8OPFpe0Efv - on russian)

Dear Alexander

I enjoyed reading your essay very much, I agree the standard model is a foundation in physics that have run out of particles to explain except the axion now that the Higgs may have been found. In my opinion in physics the interest may be turned more towards how bosons react in Bose Einstein Condensate, BEC. For example by observing how bosons move through a BEC it will provide the missing link that will combine everything together, of course since bosons are so hard to detect that is not going to be easy, we can however use Helium II phase change and other heavier atoms to form condensates.

Since the proton contains two up quarks and one down quark which only account for 1 percent of its mass, the remainder of the protons mass is due to the kinetic energy of the quarks and to the energy of the gluon fields that bind them together. In my judgment that means that most of the mass is dependent on the protons continuously moving through a Higgs-like bosonic field which may include higgs, gluons, proposed-axions, z boson and w boson particles as a result it forms a BEC of all the bosons within that field giving us mass.