The Universe - An Effect Without Cause by Philip Gibbs

Dr. Gibbs,

"It is because causality is an emergent phenomema. There is no indication that it is built into the fundamental laws of physics..."

I gather that by "...the fundamental laws of physics..." you don't mean beginning equations such as f=ma. With regard to the implication of "There is no indication that it (cause) is built into the fundamental laws of physics...", it is a state of affairs that leaves physics permanently incomplete and permanently lacking understanding of the nature of the universe.

Cause is not dispensible from a body of empirical knowledge that consists only of effects, not even by sophisticated mathematical theoretical manipulations and theoretical speculations. If it isn't included from the beginning it cannot emerge from theory.

There is no basis in the body of empirical evidence for declaring anything about cause other than that effects require it. The major missing part of your program is the origin of order. You accept order for free: Orderly stuff happens because order exists? Presumably meaning that order emerges from orderly stuff.

James

Definition: causality

The relation between causes and effects.

Definition: phenomenon

Any state or process known through the senses rather than by intuition or reasoning.

Phil

You're confusing process itself with relations within process or between processes.

Acausal view of time mean that time is eternal.

I am agree with you, because the Universe is cyclic and eternal.

Finally we can finding common point.It is very good.

Now i would like to concern James Putnam reminding about Newton Second law

My favourite book in physics ХИДЕКИ ЮКАВА ЛЕКЦИИ ПО ФИЗИКЕ

"Lectures on Physics"of Hideki Yukawa, translated to Russian from Japanese.It is a brilliant book is a clever and witty.I can't find out translation in English and therefore I will try to used Google translation.

Yukawa cites the opinion of the Ernst Mach on Newton's Second law:

"In the XIX century. German and Austrian physicists, especially Mach and Boltzmann, very fond of philosophy.

Max engaged in reconstruction of Newtonian mechanics is not in the sense of creating another new theory, but in the sense of a different interpretation of the old. In particular, he said that he introduced the concept of irrational forces: the force, according to Mach, is not an independent physical quantity, it is simply the product of mass and acceleration. In other words, he believed that Newton's equation of motion F = ma - no more than the definition of the left side through the right side.

The acceleration can be accurately measured by observing the motion of bodies. But the question of what weight, you can not give a specific answer, saying that the mass by its nature is inherent in matter. A force, thought Max, are obtained by multiplying the acceleration by the mass.

Max wanted to get rid of the concept of mass. He was not satisfied that the observation of the collision of two bodies can determine only the ratio of their masses."

Phil

Get rid notion "emergent" and "causal", when you are thinking about time.But time is tricky and i wrote above my complementary opinion.

Now about space.I think contrary to dogma about 4-dimensional space-time we need

in some situation see 3:1 relation.

Once(Fri 8/1/2008) 1:21 PM) I am asking:

Dear Dr Weinberg

If space is discrete and time is continue,4-dimensional space-time

lost its sense or not?

Sincerely

Yuri Danoyan

Yes(weinberg@physics.utexas.edu

Dr. Gibbs,

I am not certain who the 'you' is that your message was directed to, but taking a part of it and expressing my view:

"We observe that past causes have future effects but this is not built into the laws of nature. ..."

It is built into the laws of nature or it would not exist. It is not built into the laws of physics because experimentation cannot be performed upon cause. There are no effects that are cause. The laws of physics are not the laws of nature. They do not account for cause. They do not account for existence. They do not account for any level of explanation or prediction of intelligence.

"It is a statistical phenomenon governed by the second law of thermodynamics..."

Which itself (the second law of thermodynamics) is not for free or underserving of explanation for its existence. Givens represent our lack of understanding and not beginnings that, when properly understood, are not beginnings. They are beginnings without explanation or understanding. They are universal gifts to which the theorist cannot claim sovereignty over.

"...which is an emergent law valid for macroscopic processes. It works only because of the influence of the past big bang singularity which was constrained to have a low entropy due to fundamental symmetries in the laws of physics. The entropy of the universe then increases with the flow of time away from the big bang."

The entropy argument is theoretically useful but lacks connection to its original thermodynamic derivation. Clausius' discovery is not explained. It was skipped over and made into something different, something else. The Clausius' entropy is not statistical. Its solution is exact. Further information can tell us that the solution should be treated statistically for the real world.

However, it is unknown what it is that Clausius discovered, and, making it a statistical problem does not answer: What is the thermodynamic entropy that Clausius discovered? The definition of entropy relied upon so heavily today does not have a connection to that discovery. The new definition is a different type of derivation of a different physical problem. The nature of Clausius' entropy remains unexplained.

The evolution of intelligent life is part of the laws of nature, but, not part of the laws of physics.

From another message above:

"You cannot do foundational physics without following some kind of philosophical ideas about how to proceed."

You cannot do 'theoretical' physics without following some kind of philosophical ideas about how to proceed. Theoretical physics includes the addition, to the equations of physics, of theorists' guesses about the nature of cause, space, and time among other guesses beginning with the nature of mass. It is the theorists' philosphies that those altered physics equations tell back to us.

James

Temporal causality is causality related to time. If you set your alarm clock and it goes off in the morning that is temporal causality. It went off (effect) because you set it (cause) The cause precedes effect.

Ontological causality is when something is seen as a reason for something else but there is no time element. For example. The proton is heavy because it is composite. Ontologival causality is just reductionism. Everything should be explained in terms of more primitive or fundamental laws (but I dont think this holds either)

James, I was using the generic "you" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you

We will have to agree to disagree about causality. I think more people would agree with you than me but that is because I am ahead of my time :)

Clausius' idea of entropy applied to steam engines and his energy was limited to heat and work. Now we know much more about what these things are and can define them in much more general contexts but our idea of the entropy and energy in a steam engine still give the same result. The entropy of a black hole is given by the area of its event horizon. This is crucial to my train of reasoning. Obviously Clausius would not have been able to say much about that.

Dr. Gibb's,

"Clausius' idea of entropy applied to steam engines and his energy was limited to heat and work. Now we know much more about what these things are and can define them in much more general contexts but our idea of the entropy and energy in a steam engine still give the same result. The entropy of a black hole is given by the area of its event horizon. This is crucial to my train of reasoning. Obviously Clausius would not have been able to say much about that."

"... Now we know much more about what these things are and can define them in much more general contexts but our idea of the entropy and energy in a steam engine still give the same result. ..."

But we do not know what the result of Clausius' derivation means. We do not have an understanding of what was calculated. Clausius discovered something defined ideally but rigorously. I suggest again that we Clausius' discovery cannot be explained. If the result you are speaking about goes to probability entropy or statistical entropy or information entropy, then they do not give the result that applies to the original derivation of thermodynamic entropy.

"... The entropy of a black hole is given by the area of its event horizon. This is crucial to my train of reasoning. Obviously Clausius would not have been able to say much about that. ..."

This entropy is not the same thing that Clausius discovered. The thermodynamic foundation of which you spoke, with regard to entropy, has not yet been laid.

"... We will have to agree to disagree about causality. I think more people would agree with you than me but that is because I am ahead of my time :)"

Thank you for remaining patient. I think that you should be able to make your case without my interference. However, when you use words such as 'sad' or 'need for reprogramming' it begs for rebuttal. It is not sad for one to have a different view about the meaning of the same empirical evidence. Acceptance of a different theoretical viewpoint is sufficent to support a different view.

Reprogramming is not called for so long as answers are missing. When and if we learn the nature of the universe, then perhaps authoratative dispatching might have a place. The search for knowledge moves in different directions for good reason.

Your paragraph from an earlier message:

"Our brains are also like computers (classical computers this time) but nobody sat down and wrote the prgrams and typed in the intial data before pressing the return key. Our brains evolved to run the way they do in response to our environment and this is possible because of the second law of dynamics which is an emergent law."

No programs, no initial data, yet we could learn? What first step is there that makes learning possible?

From another of your messages:

"James. I would not call F=ma fundamental because it is a classical Newtonian equation which has been replaced by more fundamental laws from relativity and quantum mechanics. ..."

Except that f=ma, before the theorist decides to guess about the nature of either force or mass, is theory free. It teaches us about the meaning of empirical evidence. The latter 'fundamental laws' are not devoid of empirical meaning but are repleat with theoretical ideas representing the imaginings of the theorists.

"However, even in classical Newtonian mechanics temporal causality is not a necessary assumption. You can state a problme by giving initial positions and velocities which you would call causes and work out later positions and velocities which you would call effects. ..."

The problem as you have stated it does not justify my calling 'initial positions and velocities' cause. They are not cause. Cause is unknown to all.

"But you can also start from final positions and velocities and work backwards as we do when working out where the planets were in prehistory. The only requirement here is consistency. ..."

Consistency comes from order.

"Causality only appears when thermodynmaics is taken into account and then there is an asymmetry between future and past, but the laws of thermodynamics are emergent and are not written into the fundamental laws."

Causality appears at the very first instance of an observed effect.

My words quoted by you: "Cause is not dispensible from a body of empirical knowledge..."

"You have just stated this and not given a reason for it so it appears to be your assumption that it is true. It is the point of my essay to say that the assumption is unnecessary. ..."

Cause is not dispensible from a body of 'empirical' knowledge because empirical knowledge consists of effects. Effects are naturally theory free although the theorist can intervene and add on their preferred interpretation. Cause, or I suppose time and other properties, can always be made to appear to be dispensible by adding on theory and manipulating those equations derived to represent that theory. If cause disappears, meaning really does disappear as opposed to replacing it with other names, from equations it is because the theory to which those equations have become subjugated didn't contain it.

"You say that the origin of order is missing from my explanation. Order is low entropy..."

Order is what makes usefullness possible. Order is what precedes results. Order is what dictates all effects that have ever occurred or will ever occur in the universe. Order is what contained all of that potential right from the beginning. Order does not emerge. There is nothing from which it can emerge other than a more complete order.

You have remained very patient. I think I have said enough. I would not think of rating you low because of disagreement. Your willingness to discuss these matters with me rates very high. Thank you for sharing your views here.

James

James, it has been a pleasure discussing these things with you. We have covered a lot of ground. I will get round to reading your essay soon for a better idea of how you think.

Every Universe is the cause of the next Universe.Time is the circle.

Personally, I think that causality is far more fundamental than the so-called "fundamental laws of physics" since:

Conventional physics requires that 26 fundamental parameters be put into the "standard model" by hand.

Conventional physics has not been able to resolve the vacuum energy density crisis.

Conventional physics cannot explain the fine structure constant.

Conventional physics cannot specifically identify the universal dark matter.

Conventional physics cannot predict the masses of fundamental particles.

Conventional physics cannot reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Conventional physics cannot explain why galaxies exist, or why they come in radically different flavors like ellipticals and spirals.

And extensions of conventional physics have taken a severe beating at the LHC.

If you are basing your conclusions (such as that "emergence is more fundamental than causality") on the heuristic, model-building that nowadays passes for fundamental physics, then I suggest that you are building upon a foundation of plastic.

Note how willing the postmodern pseudoscientists are to discard something as elegant and well-tested as General Relativity in favor of rubbish like Verlinde's "emergent gravity" and related untestable blather like "backwards causation" and giving up spacetime for comic book fizzics..

Robert L. Oldershaw

Discrete Scale Relativity

As far as I'm sure that Time is a circle,I suspect that the Space obeys to tangent curve.No dimensions.Only angles.

Robert it is good to see you over here. Here are a few points that you are welcome to argue with.

- I agree about the unsolved problems you list. All theoretical physicists are aware of these things and are looking for further enlightenment to understand them better. There have always been further problems to solve in physics and it may be a long time before we reach the bottom of them.

- I am promoting consistency (not emergence) as a replacement for csusality. Many things become emergent in physics as we peel back the layers towards the more fundamental core. I dont think it makes sense to attack emergence as a general feature of physics because it is everywhere.

- I am not promoting Verlinde's emergent gravity. It has some interesting features but his comoslogical inetrepreations seems pretty wild to me and I have mentioned this on vixra log before now. The subject is not mentioned in this essay, neither is backward causation which I reamin skeptical about.

- None of the points you made explain why you think temporal causality is fundamental. I would genuinely like to hear why people think it is so fundamental. It seems to me that it is just an assumption that people are not willing to give up.

Hi Philip,

Don't take it too personally. Every time I see what I think is hype that over-sells our current understanding of nature I respond with a counter-balancing rant about how much we do not know. It has become reflexive behavior for those on both sides of the issues.

Here's one major question I have: Are causality and emergence (whatever that is specifically) mutually exclusive? What would be the reasoning for a positive answer?

You ask for people to explain their confidence in the fundamentality of causality. Well, everything empirically known through direct testing supports this confidence. Evidence for violations of causality are all tellingly in the unobersevable past (e.g., the beginning of the expansion of our metagalaxy) or in the microcosm where direct observations are impossible and we rely on inferences backed by copious suspect assumptions.

Please don't tell me that quantum mechanics demands acausality. I agree with Feynman that 'no one really understand what QM says about nature, even if it gives the right answers heuristically'. There are many mutually excusive interpretations of QM and the "experts" argue continually and with considerable heat about which version is correct.

How can you flatly say that "emergence is more fundamental than causality"?

That is the question. What motivates this conjecture?

For Robert and Philip

Freemen Dyson about unsolved problems in physics(The Future of Physics, Phys. Today 23 (9) (1970)

"To my mind there are only two things that would really would be disastrous for the future of physics. One is if would solve all of the major unsolved problems. That would be indeed be a disaster, but I am not afraid of it happening in the foreseeable future.

The other disastrous thing would be if we become so pure and isolated from the practical problem of life that none of brightest and most dedicated students wants any longer to study physics"