Reductionist Doubts by Julian Barbour

Dear Julian

Another clear, well written essay. I have always looked at machian principles and SD with great enthusiasm and the essay makes it very accesible. The idea of generating the background (space,time) upon the behaviour of their ''inhabitants'' fascinates me. As I told you before, I plan to study SD deeply and try to find the origin of the best-matching procedure (maybe by using category theory?).

''Instead of thinking of particles in space and time, we should perhaps be thinking in terms of complete shapes of the universe''

We arrive at the importance of shapes by questioning:'' what is time, what is space?'' and giving a meaning to them by observation. More questioning on what is time and what is space could lead to something even bigger that could maybe have SD as a part. This is what I argue in my essay (that I showed you as a draft via email. here´s the final version Absolute or Relative Motion...or Something Else?), and it´s something I´ve been thinking.

Good luck in the competition!

Best Regards,

Daniel Wagner

Hello Mr Barbour,

I found your essays very intresting. We search the answers. The universal spirituality like a torch of extrapolations. The reductionism for me is more complex. The trinity that said is relevant considering the fractal form the mai central sphere. But the complexity after this 1 and 3 is so important. The system is finite and precise, so it implies a specific serie , similar for the quantum scale and the cosmological scale. This number is very relevant. The main codes are inside these main central spheres, with their correlated volumes. This ultim fractal permits also the cretaion of all others forms. Your dynamics of sphapes are relevant when the finite groups are inserted. The newtonian mecanic and the Borhian interpretation are very relevant when the rotations are proprotional with mass. The unification of the SR and GR is explained in this line of reasoning.The duration is implied by the rotations of spheres.The time is so a pure correlated duration. Irreversible in its pure generality. The machian principle is relevant, your extrapolations also. My equations help for the universal rotation around the central sphere. That said the Universal sphere and this central sphere in my line of reasoning does not turn. So the rotation of the Universe of Godel is not logic in its generality.Only the intrinsic spheres turn.So the quantum spheres and the cosmological spheres. See that more a sphere turns, less is its mass.its volume also is correlated. That's why the finite groups are essential for the uniqueness serie. Like for the quantization of the mass. In this logic, the SR and the GR are unified.the light turns in opposite sense than mass.

They turn so they are Mr Barbour ! the inertie dances with my equations if and only if the serie is finite considering the ultim fractal.

See that this fractal is universal, so the universal sphere is a foto of our quantum uniqueness. It is important consideringt he Machian principle and the entropical principle in a closed evolutive space time. See that the isotropical and homogene space time(the sphere) is essential.

The coherences appear easily when the groups are finite for the quantization.

I ish you good luck, it is abeautiful essay.

ps the fractal permits to create also all the forms and shapes.because the lattices disappear in the perfect contact....

Regards

JB:

Somehow, your essay seems related to my model, (in End Notes of To Seek Unknown Shores

聽聽 http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1409

I am trying to imagine the distal vertex of a tetrahedron that communicates with the central point of sphere contained within the solid angle of the tetrahedron such that the sphere is always tangent to the tetrahedral face. It is a naive attempt to combine motion AND growth from microscopic to macroscopic dimensions.

Perhaps you can destroy the idea so that I might really retire.. Thank You.

Your writing is lucid.

Hi Julian,

Thanks for yet another well-written essay. You may be interested to read some of Eddington's Fundamental Theory. There are some similarities to your approach.

Nevertheless, I have to say I was a bit surprised by some of your assertions regarding reductionism. I think there is a subtle but important distinction that appears to have been muddled in several of the essays that have been critical of reductionism and that is the difference between reductionism as a method for investigating science and reductionism (or "constructionism" as P.W. Andersen called it) as an actual causal "structure" to the universe.

Certainly holistic approaches are indeed useful and even reductionism itself does not deny that new features will appear at higher levels of complexity. But the holistic approaches still require knowledge of the fact that there *are* parts to begin with and thus must mean that some individual understanding of those parts is a prerequisite to understanding the whole. By dint of the fact that something possesses non-uniformity, which it must if it is to be understood as *having* parts to begin with, requires some recognition of those parts as individual features. Thus it would seem reductionism is *required* to some extent for an understanding of anything other than an utterly featureless structure.

So, for instance, in your example of the triangle from shape dynamics, the concept of "shape" still requires knowledge of the concept of angles. To a large extent, this is still reductionism. Thus, while the universe itself may not be reductionist in its structure, I fail to see how we can make sense of it outside of a reductionist framework which is much broader than you make it out to be. Honestly, I really don't see how any of the shape dynamics arguments point to any serious flaws in reductionism itself unless one takes a seriously narrow definition of it that is completely inconsistent with the way it has been used over the years.

Incidentally, many of the "failures" of reductionism that people like to point to (e.g. you mentioned some issues with general relativity) may simply be that these discoveries (like general relativity) are not universally applicable (incidentally, with regard to shape dynamics, I fail to see how it is all that different from a block universe, not to mention the fact that it seems as if the changes still need to be relative to *something* though heaven knows what that is).

Regarding the history of reductionism, I also don't see how Newton's notion of absolute space "introduced" reductionism. That seems like a bit of "backward causation" from the shape dynamics argument about triangles. The truth of the matter is that reductionism as a method for carrying out the scientific method was developed by a number of people over a span over nearly 200 years.

Sorry to sound overly harsh. I think there are certainly some interesting ideas to be explored here (including one that I will e-mail you about concerning the relationship between distance and angle), but I think my biggest objection is that it seems that reductionism has been mis-characterized. As one anonymous poster said elsewhere on this site, "In a serious sense anti-reductionism is a straw man. Practically, realistically, there's no other way to do experimental science except analytically."

Again, sorry to sound so harsh. But where would we be without friendly disagreements, eh? Perhaps we'll get to do one of those mock debates at the next conference with you (and George Ellis and others...) on the pro-reductionist side and me (lonely old me...) on the anti-reductionist side.

Cheers,

Ian

Julian

Indeed it is difference. Physical reality occurs differently, ie when one is compared with another then difference is identifiable, and hence we know there is alteration. In the circumstance of physical existence, any given sequence can only be linear because the predecessor must cease to exist. There can only be one physically existent state within the sequence at a time. Any form of recombining, oscillation or whatever is really a re-occurrence of a previous existent state (though I think the complexity is such that this could never occur, it is just that from a higher level of differentiation it appears that way).

The analogy is a film. It has the appearance of constant movement, but ultimately there is a state of non-movement. This is the importance of timing (your favourite subject!). Because difference involves: 1) substance (ie what it was), 2) order (ie order of occurrence), 3) frequency (ie the rate at which differences occur). Timing is concerned with the latter. In other words. if we had a timing system with a unit of time which was equivalent to the fastest change in existence, then what occured could be differentiated to the level where there is no form of change. Which is what is physically existent, as it cannot involve change as that constitutes more than one existent state. Timing is concerned with the rate at which change occurs, it is not a feature of any given state of physical reality.

Take an elementary particle spinning. What constitutes physical reality? The particle-no because it is in a variety of physical states. One has to identify one of them. So is it half a spin, a whole spin, etc? No, because that involves more than one physically existent state. The answer involves isolating the smallest degree of spatial alteration possible. Take the life-cycle of a leaf. Ontologically, it is incorrect to refer to the entity as leaf, thereby implying it is the same, but altering. It only appears to be the same at the level of differentiation we are capable of. In fact, it is a different physical reality as every given point in time in the sequence, it just maintains certain superficial physical attributes which we ascribe to leaf, and only one of those occurs at a time.

Paul

Julian,

I am suspecting that the angle you "measure" in ADM correlates somehow to a Lorentz Rotation angle? Recall that a Lorentz boost can be represented as a bonified rotation in the information space of Dirac. Does ADM build the "information space" of Einstein that provides the ultimate in a physical spatial scaling w/ "a measured Lorentz angle value" for each physical object possesing mass and having a rest frame to make measures within? If so, this sounds like the information we receive when we multiply by a complex #. Isn't this the information attained by conformal QED? ADS/CFT stuff with Alpha being the 5D symmetry having the 4D QFT "shapes" occupying a bounding surface?

Your analogy of the Alpha as the most uniform angle space yearned for by all different angle spaces (well you may not have exactly stated this ... ad lib by me here) may imply that the angle space of the ADS version of a QFT "desires" to become part of the 5 Dimentional informational space but has asymmetrically been broken off and given a series of angle measures that "precisely measure the asymmetric break-up" (maybe encoded in DNA for a "life" shape?)... like a conciousness in birth being the asymmetrical parting from a structure having a complete symmetry (like point symmetry of the electron. Hmmm, this may imply that the quantum field is created by nothing more then a correlation between the asymmetric "yearning - a projection on to Alpha" that drives all other shapes to entropically become more in line with the symmetric Alpha (an S matrix with a mission!) ... thus ... all shapes contain paths (maybe similar to the Feynman decision paths) that lead them them back to occupy the Alpha symmetry once again... ?

Afterall ... in ADM a living thing would have a shape space ... and like all shapes ...

My most enjoyable read, Thank you,

Tony

Dear Julian Barbour,

thank you very much for this essay. It does very clearly set out your ideas and the ideas of other that have been the foundation for them. Like your previous essays, it is accessible to non specialists, very well crafted and relevant to the essay question. I am sure there is still more I can learn from it. It is another fine essay.

You wrote "Using grand philosophical terms, the gap between epistemology - what can be observed - and ontology - what is assumed to exist - should be as small as possible. Ideally, there should be no gap at all....." That is where our views necessarily diverge. As I regard the observed output of data processing to be distinct from what existed unobserved as the source of the data.

Thank you once again for giving some time to discuss you work on your blog thread and your replies here. Good luck in the competition.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! I suppose it is rather appropriate that when I wrote my thesis on Fundamental Theory that I included photographs of headstones from the graveyard where Eddington is buried. At any rate, I'm not sure I entirely agree regarding Fundamental Theory, but that's for another discussion over a drink sometime.

I still think I disagree about reductionism, though. As big a fan as I am of dictionaries, I find they do not always capture the subtleties in the actual usage of certain words. So nothing in the definition you posted is necessarily wrong, but I think the interpretation of that definition is almost too literal.

Consider a car, for example. I don't think anyone would disagree with the suggestion that a car can be easily understood via reductionist methods (in fact, Robert Pirsig demonstrates this, albeit with a motorcycle, as a beautiful demonstration of a reductionist scientific method in his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). But are there facets of a car that are meaningless outside of the whole? Absolutely! We could understand how every individual part works *and* how they work together to move the car, but the *purpose* of the car is entirely holistic.

Now consider a mechanic. Can a mechanic fix a car if he/she has a wholly holistic understanding of it, i.e. only knows its purpose? No because if the car fails the mechanic must still understand how the individual parts work in order to figure out how to fix the car! Yes, he/she needs to know how each of the parts is connected, but fixing the problem means isolating it.

As George pointed out in his essay, in many situations there are holistic issues that often enact a "top-down causation" effect where the "whole" somehow enacts restrictions on the parts. But that's really true of anything. For the car example, an accelerator peddle will go completely to the floor if the cable attaching it to the engine snaps (this actually happened to me). The limitations in the motion of the accelerator pedal are driven by a whole host of issues, many of which are "holistic" or even unrelated to the actual mechanisms of the car itself (e.g. laws may constrain design). Despite all of this, I can't see how a reductionist method could possibly be avoided here nor do I think reductionism itself excludes certain holistic notions such as "purpose" (incidentally, in order to determine the purpose of a car, if one is ignorant of such things, amounts to obtaining more information which is, in itself, a reductionist thing to do - the "whole" doesn't proclaim itself a car).

So the argument goes that there are certain phenomena that are simply either too complex or too abstract to be understood in the same way as a car. But this begs the question, how do we *know* these phenomena are too complex or abstract? Are we simply assuming they are since our usual reductionist methods haven't worked (yet)? If so, then we are a priori assuming there's a problem with reductionism. But this is a logically unprovable assumption. As Carl Sagan once said, "[y]our inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true."

Or, what happens if we give up when we are just on the verge of understanding but don't realize it? Worse yet, what happens if this anti-reductionist movement takes on a life of its own and drives reductionism into obscurity? Because the argument that certain phenomena are too complex to be understood in this reductionist manner is the exact argument that is used by proponents of intelligent design and creationism. I find that a bit frightening.

At any rate, regarding shape dynamics, I agree that there absolutely is a huge conceptual difference between it and Newtonian dynamics. I understand precisely where you are coming from on this. However, I completely disagree with the idea that you can quantify the difference between two nearly identical wholes without appealing to something external to both (this is exactly what Eddington tried to do with Fundamental Theory). I mean, certainly at some point we get into some kind of recursiveness (even language is recursive since it is used to define itself). But with things like shapes, how does one quantify a difference without some reference? At some point one needs to define something which I say is reductionist. You may say this is still holistic, but at this point the argument has become one of semantics because the fact is that we need to define properties (which are inherently *not* holistic) by which we can compare the shapes. (I have more to say on this point, but I'll send you an e-mail about it.)

Now, in regard to my point about reductionism as a methodology versus reductionism as a formal structure to the universe, let me explain the latter by comparison to the former. While it might be possible that the universe contains structures whose function or purpose or nature simply cannot be understood by reductionist methods, this is *not* the same thing as saying that those structures' function or purpose or nature actually *is* independent of the behavior of its constituent parts. It may simply mean that there are limits to our *knowledge* of the universe. Part of this comes from the fact that we are *part* of the universe we are attempting to describe and thus naturally we will run into some problem of recursiveness. But taking a more holistic approach won't necessarily rid us of this problem.

So, reductionism doesn't obviate the need for holism, but fundamentally reductionism is still at the core of the scientific enterprise and must remain so if it is to remain science and not succumb to a lot of hokus pokus.

a sphere, interesting.:) revolution spherization !!!

John,

Well, to some extent, reductionism as we know it, vis-à-vis the scientific method, *is* largely a product of the last few hundred years of scientific thought. And, one of the points I've been trying to make is that nowhere does reductionism imply an anti-holism. Reductionism is merely a method for understanding the whole, but it does not deny that the whole may possess features that are unique.

Kudos on writing that on a phone, by the way. Most impressive.

Ian

So the question is: what constitutes a 'part'? There may well be different types, but, generically, I would suggest it is that which is physically existent as at any given point in time. In simple language, what is 'there' if we could 'stop the tape' (reality being analogous to a film).

Your car is no different from any other sequence of physical existence. The issue is that in that circumstance, we are defining physical reality at a level of differentiation significantly above that which occurs. The 'entity' is being defined by virtue of certain superficial physical features, and so long as they pertain, we know it as car. But the physical reality of this is much more complex. So long as the integrity of the physical sequence is maintained, and the explanation relates to that level of differentiation, then there is no problem. Indeed, apart from the fact that we could probably never define car (or any other entity) at the level of physically existent states, because of the sheer complexity involved, doing so will not assist understanding at a higher level in most cases. The 'purpose' of car is a sociological concept anyway. Issues arise when these higher levels of differentiation are deemed, incorrectly, to be physical reality, when actually they are sequences thereof (ie involve more than one physically existent state). Because then physical sequence can become confused (ie out of sequence), causal factors wrongly attributed, etc, etc.

For example: "enact a "top-down causation" effect where the "whole" somehow enacts restrictions on the parts. But that's really true of anything". Indeed so, but this is in the sense that what occurs next can only be a function of the previous occurrence. Any given physically existent state can only be the result of the immediate predecessor, both in terms of sequence and spatial location. Physical effects do not 'jump' circumstances. There is a implication in this type of thinking that the future is affected in some way. Ontologically, this is incorrect, as the future is non-existent. What actually happens is that a subsequent physically existent state occurs which is different from what otherwise would have occurred had the previous state been different. In the case of car, considerations are at a 'functional' level, in order to explain 'how it works'. It has not been differentiated to an physically existent level.

Paul

Ian,

I wasn't denying that science has codified conceptual reductionism, just pointing out the irony of imlying only science is reductionistic, ie, reductionism of reductionism. So to be wholistic about reductionism, it might be said that all knowledge is inherently reductionistic, since knowledge requires perspective and perspective is subjective.

Hello John, Paul, Mr Durham,

well said all that.

viva el revolution spherization.

In your search for low N clustering parameters you may want to read Ralph Chamberlin's "Mean Field Cluster Model For the Critical Behavior of Ferromangetics." Nature, Volume 408, November 16, 2000. While this cluster model has been derived for ferromagnetics, it applies generally to all "physical ordering in a mean field" and may provide a computational path to Alpha once you define the coupling (probably a second law derived entropy maximization). What's nice is that it leaves size "unrestrictive" which would be desirable in you scaled holistic space.

Also, your holistic space must also come with a temperature vs. size if it is truely the universe to which the holistic space depicts. Microwave temperature for todays size, and hotter on average when the universe shrinks.

One other thing, you may want to also read David Hestene's Space Time Geometry" approach to build the electron in Dirac space. The basic form of to represent the electron has the spatial pseudoscalar as the power of e (natural log). This pseudoscalar element must be directly related to your shape when the mass is that of an electron - your angles 2+2, would be the measures.

Best Regards,

Tony

Julian,

Not sure if you are reading my comments (no reply). I'll therefore make this my last "question" comment. Fermions are believed to form the structure of everything that has a measurable shape. Light (a boson) is the element that provides information regarding the shape (up to the Chandrasekhar limit). This implies that the information supplied by Shape Dynamics has to accomodate these facts (well, assuming they really are physical fact). This may then imply that Shape Dynamics can precisely describe information measured at the Fermi surface of virtually any manifold. Do the methods for obtaining information regarding the Fermi surface resemble Shape Dynamic methods - does this information correlate? One can envision the angle measures between atoms and molecules in solids (and especially atoms on the solid's surface) as being angle parameters in the Shape Dynamic representation. This would also bring forth band information as conduction (global information) and valence (local information). As the two bands part ways (conduction -> valence) global information (molecular levels) becomes local (atomic levels), periodic cellular, and increase in # of identical copies (all the atoms and molecules that makeup the solid). Can Shape dynamics accomodate anything like this? Characterizing band structure with a more simplified model could provide new horizons in the semiconductor business.

When a grad student, I went head to head with a person who insisted that the information regarding the 7x7 reconstruction of the Silicon surface was locked up in the measured angles and positions of the surface atoms .... that's it... and my argument was that the information was locked up in the hybridization of the atomic orbitals and forces generated (minimized energy, yadda, yadda). It would seem that from a shape dynamics perspective he may have had a good argument!

Regards,

Tony

Dear Julian:

I enjoyed reading your well-written and intuitive essay describing the weaknesses of the reductionist approach in representing the Natural physical reality.

My paper -" From Absurd to Elegant Universe" strongly vindicates the following conclusions of your paper especially related to the QM paradoxes and inconsistencies with GR -

"....it may be impossible to understand key features of the universe such as its pervasive arrow of time and remarkably high degree of isotropy and homogeneity unless we study it holistically - as a true whole. A satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics is also likely to be profoundly holistic, involving the entire universe. The phenomenon of entanglement already hints at such a possibility.."

The Reductionism literally means a pursuit of "Reduced" or truncated reality. The well-known Observer's Paradox of QM implies that the collapse of the wave function truncates the reality to the limits of the consciousness (or lack of it) of the observer. When this "Reduced" or truncated or incomplete view of reality is over-extrapolated to predict the universe or quantum behavior, paradoxes (multi-verses, multi-dimensions, black hole singularities, quantum gravity, quantum time, entanglement, dark matter, anti-matter, and dark energy etc.) and inconsistencies result leading to an Absurd universe.

My paper demonstrates that following a holistic approach wherein the whole universe is considered as a continuum of mass-energy-space-time, a very simple mathematical model of the missing physics (hidden variable) of the well-known spontaneous decay/birth of particles can be developed that explains the observed quantum as well as classical behaviors. The holistic model also successfully predicts the observed data at all scales from below Planck scale to beyond cosmological scales. The proposed model not only resolves black hole singularities but also the unresolved paradoxes of physics and cosmology. As you rightly said, the holistic model also explains the inner workings of QM and eliminates its paradoxes and inconsistencies with relativity. It also vindicates your conclusion that time is not a fundamental entity and is an illusion since the observed universe and galactic expansion can be predicted without any explicit consideration of a cosmic time.

I would greatly appreciate your comments on my paper. You can contact me at avsingh@alum.mit.edu.

Best Regards

Avtar Singh

You deleted all my comments because I did not read Shape Dynamics? The punishment is unproportional to the crime, Julian Barbour.

Pentcho Valev