Jonathan,
Just started your essay, but it's late, so I'm stopping with a prediction on this comment;
" While we await more advanced detectors which will reveal the gravitational wave spectrum in greater detail."
I think we will eventually understand that gravity waves are all around us. It's called 'light." The energy released as mass condenses. M=e/c2.
Yes John,
He sure did! I will miss Ray and his cheerful commentary. But at least I continue the threads we started a bit, in my essay.
All the Best,
Jonathan
Thanks for that, John;
Happy you are reading it. Glad to answer any questions you have.
More later,
Jonathan
Dear Jonathan,
I appreciate your emphasis on the topic of this contest; which basic assumptions are wrong?
Let me stress your certainly correct conjecture; no two two things (in reality) are completely separated, no system is isolated.
What you expressed with the words playful and child, I called pre-mathematical. In that our views seem to be in very good agreement too.
You are in the comfortable position advocating nice ideas like emergent dimensionality and fractal large-scale structure. I have to admit tending to question what some mathematicians of the 19th century decided. Could you please explain to me what you meant with Möbius-like? Of course, you did not refer to the syndrome but to the well known strip. I see any coherent strip in reality a 3D object which has exactly two surfaces, an inner and an outer one.
The ideal complex plane has also two faces. Complex calculus is based on ignoring one of them. I wonder why this has obviously bee forgotten.
I sincerely hope your essay will be heard and make a difference. Wishing good luck I do not intend expressing doubts.
Regards,
Eckard
Jonathen
Another masterly overview, and I liked the emphasis on 'play', which I use myself but with different theatrical metaphore's. I also value the content highly, particularly the more cerebral view of entropy. Most in keeping with my own thesis is the concept of connectivity, or how there is no 'empty space' isolating systems. I develop this to consider the whole universe as co-joined media, with motion always creating boundary conditions.
Finally I agree but also extend the view that it's not just the public who rely on and cling on to 19th century science in the face of evidence and logical analysis.
But will science not just pay lip service to the ideals and carry on as normal? I propose they need a better and more consistent solution, but one which may take more intelligence than generally available, or at least more freedom in 'play'.
I very much hope you'll read my own essay and look forward to you comments on content.
Peter
Hi Jonathan,
I enjoyed your easy-to-read essay upto the point where you said "But often, playing with ideas in theory suggests that a greater truth exists, as with Einstein and the study of gravity. Newtons Law of Gravitation is remarkably accurate within certain bounds or barring complications demanding Relativity. If an object and observer share the same local frame of reference and neither is a supermassive object, we dont need a more complicated formula."
This is much too simplistic a view imo. There are many anomalies and inconsistencies with the orthodox view on gravity. For example, how does your view of Newtonian physics explain the Flyby Anomaly?
Thanks very much, Eckard;
They are studying numeracy in early childhood now. It seems we have in innate sense of more or fewer, but need to learn the distinction between none and one of something, in order to learn how to count. If we don't get in the way of the process, children learn some very cool stuff by playing. But it's too easy to get them fixated on finding the one right answer, by playing role model too often, rather than encouraging exploration.
As to the Möbius-like nature of the 3-sphere, my understanding is this. The non-trivial twist in the Hopf fibration of S3 means that one can find trajectories that allow a smooth or continuous traversal of both the inside and outside face, as with a Möbius strip or Klein bottle. In effect-there is no inner or outer, as one can cross from one face to the other without ever leaving the surface, or passing through the topological boundary or distinction. The point below the surface one arrives at by puncturing the spere is simply the antipode of the point you started on.
This seems a close relative of a class of figures known as compact tori. When one inflates a tire tube, it gets fatter; but what if you could shrink the center hole and then allow the fattening to continue beyond the center to the opposite wall? While the limitations of objects and surfaces in 3-d space forbid this a 3-sphere lives in 4-d space, allowing the maneuver described above to be accomplished as a simple rotation. That is; it's an easy and natural extension, that gives a sphere torus-like attributes, so long as we allow a rotation in an additional dimension to take place.
An interesting thought about the complex plane. If one observes the activity of the iterand, when working on points near the border of the Mandelbrot Set, the iterations for points along one wall take place in the opposite lobe, when plotting in the cardioid region, or tend to happen on the opposite side of the Real axis in general. One could make some generalizations about active and passive modes and hemispheres. But the mirror image is just as valid.
I appreciate the comments.
All the Best,
Jonathan
Thanks Peter,
Please don't get me started on how many scientists are still making assumptions that come straight out of 19th century Physics, as though the 20th century never happened. One of the life sciences recently celebrated 200 years of success with reductionism, and it was almost enough to make me cry.
I advocate the view that Science benefits everyone, if approached correctly. But we need cooperation to crack some problems, as well as healthy competition. And we also need the playful exploration of a range of options, rather than encouraging monolithic thinking "so it will look like we know what we are talking about."
I think that there is some hubris in the air of certainty expressed by many String theory advocates, for example, but perhaps it is that sense that if they can put all the objectors in their place; these guys must know what they are talking about. That air of certainty, and the willingness to resort to intellectual put-downs, may be what is required to get finding these days - as that attitude is familiar to folks in the finance sector.
I'll read yours some time soon.
Regards,
Jonathan
Whoops,
that should read.. "what is required to get funding these days."
Regards,
Jonathan
Thanks Alan,
I agree that Newton's gravity is too simplistic, and I discuss why "we don't need a more complicated formula" is just a convenient approximation in the endnotes. I have a lot of thoughts about the need to extend our understanding of gravity, but no more time to elaborate right now. I know a little bit about the Flyby anomaly, but have not tried to explain it yet.
Let me know if any questions remain when you are done reading my essay.
All the Best,
Jonathan
Hello Eckard and Jonathan,
you like the play Jonathan and the strategy, me also now, I am begining to play you know. I will send you a book about my 3D spheres and its spherization, and don't say me that it is a lisian appraoch :)
The Nash equilibrium you know ?
Hello Thinkers,
a sphere torus, relevant like in the p- adic numbers and their taxonomy. The 3D is everywhere even at our walls. I invite you to insert the classment of numbers correlated with volumes in a pure Cantorian approach. The groups of spheres appear with determinism. The Reals R, the Rationals Q and the Qp can be harmonized. The limits must be inserted with the biggest universal 3D meaning. The hidden varibales are rational. The body of p- adic numbers show the real spherical road when the groups are well analyzed.the rotations spinal and orbital take all their meaning. The finite groups and the infinities can be classed in a pure spherical oscillation, periodic ! Don't forget the asolute value for a real understanding of or symmetries, don't forget that a symmetry fermions/bosons in a pure 3D is not a mathematical symemtry due to the -.Of course the 0 appears with 1 like a pure universal logic.
Don't forget also so that the axiom of dimensionality is not verified, so it implies a lot of things for our proportions due to the rotations of my spheres.
Regards
Jonathan,
You might consider further dissecting the intellectual dynamic in physical terms. Yes, children do explore in a non-linear, expansive fashion, but the end result is adulthood, where we settle into a stable, linear order and routine. Much as stem cells start out with the potential to be any part of the body, but to actually function as useful, mature cells, have to settle into a particular function. In many ways, this process is reductionism. It is quite useful and necessary in its linear, distillate focus. Eventually though, it becomes a closed set and subject to the old meaning of entropy, using up its stored energy and unable to access more, since that would disrupt its mature definition and routine. So it eventually dies and residual energy is dispersed out into the environment. There is this constant inductive/deductive cycle of expansion and contraction, that has no final goal, as that would simply be one more declining closed set of complete order, with no need for further expansion.
So we step back and see what stage of the cycle we currently inhabit and what lays in store, further along the pattern. I think that in current physics, just as with the current economic situation, we are at a frothy top, where efforts to continue on the present trajectory only result in blowing ever more ephemeral bubbles. So the slide back down from this top will be a form of reductionism, as all the weaker ideas struggle to survive and stronger ideas, like rocks poking through a crashing wave, become more evident. Obviously we all have different perspectives on which are the strong ideas and which are the frothy waves, but only time/evolution of the process will sort them out. Then we will repeat the process, using these new foundational concepts to further expand our understanding of reality.
Not to imply this isn't what you are doing, but just wanted to emphasize how the intellectual process is a reflection of the physical process.
Thanks John,
I like those ideas.
Even mature minds don't need to harden, however. Pete Seeger, in his 90s, has a very active mind - even for scientific topic - and has still got a more youthful demeanor than some people in their 40s. Plasma physicist Padma Shukla has such playfulness and youthful exuberance for Physics that it's hard to believe he is in his 80s.
From what I have seen, playing keeps you in the game.
Regards,
Jonathan
Thanks again,
Regarding "the intellectual process is a reflection of the physical process."
I agree whole heartedly! To costructivists, determination has a dual role that is part measurement and part a creative act; that's where the construction part comes in. One can certainly make generalizations to all of learning.
all the best,
Jonathan
Jonathan,
It is a very universal pattern. One to which even physical theorists are subject.
It's not that one can't maintain a vital outlook as an adult, but it requires a degree of objectivity many institutions, consciously or sub-consciously, frown on, given the natural tendency to promote acolytes and demote skeptics. Neither societies or organisms could long function otherwise. Nature long ago developed a process to deal with it though. Regeneration.
Hi Jonathan,
Bravo! As both science and journalism, this essay rates with the very best. Tightly reasoned, impeccably organized and a pleasure to read. I appreciate the intellectual courage and honesty it takes to reference the Joy Christian affair. Not surprisingly, my own essay builds on Joy's results, and I hope you get a chance to read and comment.
In your notes, you make the point, "The 3-sphere is an odd-ball ... as it has a Möbius-like surface." Joy makes use of that nontrivial property in his quantum correlation function. In an earlier paper (ICCS 2006) I describe it as a continuous projection between S^2 and S^4. My conviction is only stronger that the best ideas in foundational physics are converging on a complete continuous function theory that only a topological framework can accommodate.
All best,
Tom
Dear Mr. Dickau,
Although your essay was exceptionally well written, your introductory comment about children (possibly being brainwashed) into obtaining symbolic thinking capability at age two and a half was one of the most saddening pieces of literature I have ever read. No so-called civilized child has ever been taught how to obtain its own food, or find its own shelter, or to exist clad only in its own skin. Not one Reality 101 class has ever been taught in any school. Yet every single child is taught to parrot the nonsensical abstract numbers 1,2,3. As I have thoughtfully pointed out in my essay Sequence Consequence, the sensible reality of here and now is obtainable by all. Unreasonable human addicted concentration on the abstractions of the mystical there and then such as mathematics is the province of the arrogant few.
Dear Jonathan,
The FQXi contest challenged me to question nearly anything except causality and measurable quantities. Because I feel that the peers are hoping for unexpected ideas that do not hurt, I see this an unfulfillable desire, and I cannot even cheat myself, I have to hope they will nonetheless accept my submitted essay by the end of this week. My arguments are mistakable as primitive. They seem to be outdated and in some respect contrary to yours. Edwin Klingman named some authors of essays with which I tend to agree at least in part: Daryl Jantzen, Israel Perez, Jonathan Kerr. I should add some more, at least Alexander Kadin. Let's nonetheless look for agreeable among us insights that are not necessarily in a lazy one-to-one relation to mandatory tenets.
Having said what I consider most important, I cannot resist to cautiously tell you that I am someone who does not like intuitive metaphors like a tired point. When I was a little boy, many years before I heard of Euclid, I already understood a point as something non-tangible that does not have parts. Fattening a tire beyond the center seems to be impossible to me. Do not get me wrong. I have no problem to imagine all sorts of maneuvers, transformations and the like. I see myself merely aware of logical self-deceptions in case of equating model and reality.
Begging your pardon,
Eckard