Reductionist Doubts by Julian Barbour

Lawrence Crowell wrote: "On another vein I am not convinced that time is a complete illusion. Maybe I will go into this later, but I think that in quantum spacetime it may be that if you only have space then time is not defined. Conversely, if time is defined you have no space. I suspect the two are complements."

How can one qualify this without facing deletion? "Not even wrong" seems to be a suitable euphemism. Brendan Foster? Is "not even wrong" too rude? Are you going to delete this comment?

Pentcho Valev

here is what I wrote and got deleted without the link. do you think it is prime for deletion.

"The standard physics has failed to really tell us what reality is, your theory as non-standard is the most interesting one in my opinion. My theory QSA confirms your hypothesis as to the nature of time and is close to other aspects of your theory. It is also the most direct description of reality and it is a natural outcome of the mathematical universe hypothesis. My theory just like yours says that each point carries the information about the rest of the points in the universe; as a matter of fact that is how interaction is described (or brought about). My theory ties space (time indirectly), energy, matter, forces in one concept based on the line. The theory spits out the mass of the electron from purely random numbers, the first theory to naturally predict the mass of the electron. Moreover, the non-local behavior also naturally appears as an automatic consequence of invariance. Many other results are obtained including the amazing formulas."

Hi Julian,

I am always impressed with your commitment to relativity in its purest form.

I fail to understand, however, that you admit this barrier:

"I have given what I believe is the correct definition of Mach's principle [5] and argued that if the universe is closed up in three dimensions like the earth's surface in two then GR does implement Mach's principle [5]. If the universe is spatially infinite, the answer is equivocal. It is Machian however far you can imagine, but infinity is unreachable, and one can never establish a complete sense in which the whole determines the part."

Surely there are solutions to GR in an open universe that do not contradict Mach's principle. The conventional "finite and unbounded" interpretation of GR as finite in time (bounded at the singularity of creation) and unbounded in space, closed up like a 3-ball as you say -- suffers no loss of generality when transposed to a model finite in space and unbounded in time. This latter interpretation requires topology to implement global boundary conditions, and it agrees with your angle-preserving evolution of shapes without regard to the length-preservation inherent in ordinary geometry.

As always, thanks for a masterful presentation, and best wishes in the contest. (I hope you get a chance to visit my own essay site, "The Perfect First Question.")

Best,

Tom

don't try with the probelm of language and the name sphere and the name ball, for me a sphere is a ball ok dude ! You cannot arrive at your aim without bad strategies poor thinker.

Insert my spheres balls in yopur parallelizations of frustrated in team.I eat your sciences at my breakfast band of comics.And you know it all furthermore and you insit like poor obliged strategist of nothing for nothing.

put the ball in your sphere dude and buy people to kill me band of comics and don't say that it is FQXi, no it is you and your team,.FQXi it is a wonderful platform, unfortunally poor corrupted act with the soa .It is not a probelm you know.all is said in fact between us. your hate eats you in fact.You are not able to make other things in your life, because your hormons are probably weak.so you make a revenge. the ball and the sphere now, put it where I think and you brendan , delete boy of the team paid in the future .I have pity band of comics.

I will go at New York so kill me , it is better band of comics , your name are already in a letter copied for the attorneys and my friends all around this planet and even if you have utilized false name like a false friend, don't forget my quick analyze and the conclusion easy to see. and You Mr Barbour, you accept this comportment also, no not you?

You think what Tom that you can steal a thing impossible to steal.try like you make, you shall see on the entropical arrow of times, we shall discuss when we shall be in the aether poor thinker limited furthermore. I see only a publicity and always a kind of comportment of generalist, but no tam, you are not a generalist.patrick Murphy said to shane steiçnman that bruce watkins improve, let me laugh band of comics.and kill me, and still you shall loose in the aether ahahahh sleep well .I will be there all the nights in your dreams, just to show you what are the contemplations of the universe.pray so or buy a bibble and the talmud and the texts of siddartha Gottam, because be sure dude.You shall understand.

Regards and put the balls in your sphere comics vanitious full of hate, your hate increases still, logic in front of the truth for the pseudos.

and also dude decreasing the veloccity of your country,you know what, you can even try with the faith, and even with all the discriminations, that will not change the spherization of all high spheres. you can trying with all what you want, but you know the better I am repeating is really to kill me. It is more easy if you begin to have doubts you know dude. Am I a danger for USA no !!! I love USA.Am I a danger for the bad systems, yes because I dislike the bad.

Regards

Dear Julian

Freeman Dyson described reductionism in physics as the effort "to reduce the world of physical phenomena to a finite set of fundamental equations".

Please read my 2 essays

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/946

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413

It is a real triumph of reductionism.

No doubt about reductionism...

All the best

Yuri

Dear Julian

Freeman Dyson described reductionism in physics as the effort "to reduce the world of physical phenomena to a finite set of fundamental equations".

Please read my 2 essays

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/946

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413

It is a real triumph of reductionism.

No doubt about reductionism...

All the best

Yuri

Dear Dr. Barbour,

You kindly deleted the following comment of mine but I find it important so let me repost it.

You are looking for a no-expansion explanation of the Hubble redshift:

JUlian Barbour: "The greatest need is for an EXPLANATION OF THE HUBBLE RED SHIFT THAT DOES NOT RELY ON EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE. (...) The estimates of section 7 show how readily the scale-invariant potential energy can increase if the universe becomes more clumpy. Scale-invariant gravity must, in the first place, yield a cause of the Hubble red shift. The only plausible candidate that I can see is this change in the 'potential' of the universe induced by such clumping. It is suitably great and, according to the standard model, has been happening since the end of inflation. Therefore, the conjecture has to be that somehow the change in potential causes the Hubble red shift. This is not inherently impossible. We know that differences in the gravitational potential give rise to a gravitational red shift."

But the speed of light VARIES with the gravitational potential, according to both general relativity and Newton's emission theory of light. So perhaps the redshifted light coming from distant celestial objects has a speed lower than c? What does Shape Dynamics say?

Sincerely yours, Pentcho Valev

Hi Julian,

Take a look at: http://digitalwavetheory.com/DWT/22_Classical_Gravity.html

and: http://digitalwavetheory.com/DWT/21_Self-Gravity.html

It may give you some ideas on how to get a red shift without expansion. It is possible that the red shift may come from increased gravity and not increased speed.

OH, and if you get a chance check out my entry: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1403

Greetings from a fellow Machian.

Don L.

The computer and the universe

John Archibald Wheeler

Abstract

The reasons are briefly recalled why (1) time cannot be a primordial category in the description of nature, but secondary, approximate and derived, and (2) the laws of physics could not have been engraved for all time upon a tablet of granite, but had to come into being by a higgledy-piggledy mechanism. It is difficult to defend the view that existence is built at bottom upon particles, fields of force or space and time. Attention is called to the "elementary quantum phenomenon" as potential building element for all that is. The task of construction of physics from such elements is compared and contrasted with the problem of constructing a computer out of "yes, no" devices.

Preparation for publication assisted by the University of Texas Center for Theoretical Physics and by National Science Foundation Grant No. PHY78-26592.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/ck753337h0515573/

Dear Pentcho, Dear Julian,

thank you for clarifying your positions, so i can see more clearly.

Stefan

Pentcho

Has it ever struck you to ask what the speed at which any given photons happen to travel has got to do with anything? Except that is, the timing relationship between the incidence of observation and the occurrence of the reality which affected the state of those photons.

The whole issue of the supposed relationship between the speed of light and simultaneity is based on simple mistakes (section 1 1905). Unless they occurred in immediate proximity(!), the point in time when two events occurred simultaneously was deemed to have a relationship with the distance between them. This is nonsense. Either events occurred at the same time, or they did not, distance is irrelevant.

Distance was then expressed in terms of duration of light travel, which is irrelevant as such, in that the distance AB is one distance, however expressed. The next mistake was confusion over timing and duration. So the point in time at which both events occurred was defined as being when the time (ie duration) for light to travel in one direction equalled the time (ie duration) to travel back. Although nonsense anyway, this was then incorrectly expressed. Hence: when t(b) - t(a) = t'(a) - t(b), a duration of time has been confused with a point in time, ie this involves the concept of 'and then' back. Following on from this, the constant velocity of light is derived as: 2AB/ t'(a) - t(b).

Paul

Dear Julian,

An intriguing enjoyable and intriguing essay from an author I really respect. However I am not completely convinced that a holistic approach is always indispensable. Could one not argue, that if the result of the reductionist approach is a concept, idea or formula that is physically *very close* to nature then the whole would emerge from it on its own without further ado? As a minimalist example cellular automata interact according to a local rule and from it the whole emerges in due time.

Even so, perhaps I have implemented a species of Mach's principle in my Beautiful Universe Theory (BU) on which I based my fqxi essay Fix Physics! . My reductionist idea is that the Universe is made up of a lattice of just one type of building block. These blocks or nodes are discrete bundles of angular momentum rotating around their axes in units of (h) and the axes have various angular orientations in each timeless universal State. . Thus L =/= 0 in this scheme. Attached is figure 11 from my BU theory showing how a twist in the angular orientation of two nodes to lock into matter is caused by (or causes) the entire linkage of nodes throughout the universe to mimic the twist, and explaining why E=mc^2

I did not know about Mach's idea that time is emergent from motion. Interesting. I feel that the reductionist source idea in GR (space-time warping = gravity) is physically misleading. GR's Achilles heel is that it includes SR. Why should an observer-related physics enter in realms out there where it is only nature interacting with itself in the same inertial frame - for example light curving around the sun? Without SR, GR becomes very simple - gravity can be reduced to an optical density field, as Eddington proposed, and I have explained in BU.

Shape Dynamics (SD) sounds like a new concept that, at first sight, I wish I do not need to think about! - if there is a simple, local,causal explanation for gravity=acceleration=curvature I would be satisfied with that. In BU it is the curvature of the classical gravitational potential streamlines (or the orthogonal wavefronts) that defines this equivalence. You wrap SD in a probabilistic interpretation.

Quantum probability as a physically realistic phenomena is another of my bête noires . In BU I have shown how probability emerges naturally in the lattice interactions, and how the false point-photon idea made it seem that probability is an abstract interpretation of a dualistic particle-wave nature resistant to physical realism. Have you read the amazing experimental work of Eric Reiter reported in his current fqxi essay in which he proves that gamma rays are not point photons? In such a Nature where probability is the result of systematic, linear local interactions, entanglement can be understood simply and directly without resorting to further ingenious but perhaps complicating holistic ideas as SD.

Hope I have made some sense! I welcome your learned response to my rather qualitative and incomplete ideas.

With best wishes,

VladimirAttachment #1: 2_BUFIG11.jpg

If Mathematics, the tool of theoretical physics, can only describe becoming , then Mathematics of Becoming is Physics ?

I afraid there is no such thing as Mathematics of Becoming at all...

May be it is new philosophical abstraction or some kind of physical simplification of Calculus, and, If I understand, we cannot deduce any taking technical mathematical theorems seriously from Notion Mathematics of Becoming ( Similarly, from Einstein attempt to introduce a new kind of complex number in SR - please, see my FQXi 12 essay - we simply cannot deduce scientifically any taking physical time theory seriously )

I suppose, that Mathematics is not Tool, Language or Human subjectivity at all. It is independent perfectly working area of experimental science. Anybody can test for example, that, x^3 y^3 = z^3 cannot exist in Nature and in any version of Multiverse as well. Pure Mathematics is not Pure Physics.

Dear Julian Barbour,

I appreciate that you are a busy man and there are more essays in this competition than any individual can be expected to read thoroughly and comment upon. However I would be very grateful indeed if you could take a look at my essay. If you are able to comment on it as well that would mean a great deal to me. I have received very little feedback from the members over the years and I do admire your essay writing and other very clear and sensible explanations of your work. I have tried to improve my writing from last years inadequate entry, making it more readable. I will certainly respect your opinion, even if you dislike what I have produced and can find no merit in it.

Dear Julian!

An excellent analysis in your essay and hypotheses. But the «Alpha» and «Omega» is not enough. To search Protostructure (Superstructure, "the missing structure" by Umberto Eco) requires synthesis of "Alpha" and "Omega". This can be done "Delta" with its deep OntoTopoLogical Interpretation. Ontological framework of the country Platonia - it is also an ontological framework of the world (univerce), represented as the natural (absolute) coordinate system. .

From a country of eternal forms helps to get the time - the memory structure at a certain level of its holistic existence. Time is the burden of becoming. This - the price of becoming. Its outcome - asymmetry. Sincerely, Vladimir

Dr. Barbour,

I did not find in your first essay that you showed how newton's notion of an independent absolute time can be derived from motion. As far as I can tell, Newton was attempting to define the best clock, not absolute time, and used motion for that purpose of defining a most useful measure of duration. More to the point of your present essay, your example in part 1 of reductionism does not appear to be an example of reductionism. It appears to be an example of applying your 'holistic' concept in a piecemeal fashion.

Reductionism is the ability to trace evolution step by step through its development. Those steps will not be small repeated images of the whole. They will however, reveal at every step during evoluion, from beginning to end, the same unity that makes the holistic result possible. I accept that your professional view is different from my unprofessional view.

I will though take this opportunity to state my view that neither time nor space undergo changes of velocity. For this reason there is no empirical evidence to tell us about motion involving either space or time. Motion tells us only about effects endured by objects. We do not learn the natures of 'cause' in either of its two forms, force and mass. The still unknown natures of the universe, restricting this to the mechanical concepts employed by theoretical physics, are those of force, mass, space, and time.

Should you find it worthwhile to offer corrections to what I have said, I would welcome them. Thank you.

James

Julian/Pentcho

It is the concept of simultaneity, as defined, that is wrong. Any given physically existent state occurred at the same time as any other, if that was at the same point in time. Timing being an extrinsic measuring system which enables the comparison of disparate changes. It has nothing whatsoever to do with light, etc, etc. Now, in the assessment of whether that occurred, and if the sense being utilised is sight, the speed of light is, obviously, a factor. But whatever occurred, did so, independently of the sensing thereof, and occurrences either happened at the same point in time, or they did not.

The speed of light always starts at the same speed because it is the result of an atomic reaction, and like anything else, it will then continue at that speed unless impinged upon. There is nothing mysterious about this. But, 1905 presumed light was in vaccuo and everything else was not, hence the two could not co-exist (so it was not a cohesive theory and is not SR). Later, SR presumed a purely theoretical circumstance where everything was in vaccuo (in order to reconcile the mis-match of 1905). While GR is the real world, and so light is affected by the physical circumstances encountered in its travel.

Paul