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  • Post #15

Hi George and David. Nice comments on the fundamental nature of energy.

What is permanent and unchanging is inanimate. What changes and varies to a relatively extreme degree is also inanimate. Energy is both more permanent and more transient as this relates to us and typical/ordinary objects. Now, in the absence of gravity we are literally out of touch with reality. Nature and thought prefer low energy. Our natural motion is independent of the sun and that of the speed of photons. Instantaneity is a property of both gravity and energy. With gravity and inertia/or energy in fundamental and natural balance/order/equivalency a lack of energy would not basically manifest. My essay discusses this. Gravity is tightly connected with accelerated motion and relevant motion. Instantaneity is ultimately connected with gravity, energy, and the fact that gravity cannot be shielded.

Balance, variability, randomness, order, and completeness ultimately go together. Balance, the center, the middle, and order ultimately go together in physics. My essay shows this. Energy/inertia and gravity in true/fundamental balance is extremely ordered. The growth and development of our thought/ideas, being, and experience require extreme order and conserved/maintained/balanced energy.

Natural reality involves both the truth AND us fundamentally. I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

Dear Frank,

Thank you for your interest in our essay. We look forward to your comments and rating, and will consider and rate yours too. Good luck in the competition!

Best wishes,

David

Dear Dan,

Thank you for reading our essay so closely, and your friendly but challenging questions. I have tried to respond to all of them below. The post is a bit long for the editor so I'll do it in consecutive chunks.

Q1: [p1] One must ask, what does it mean for there to "exist" a complete explanation for something, let alone for everything? Where does it exist? Does an explanation mean a cause? If explaining is the act of an agent, then clearly there are many things for which no explanation "exists". Leibniz himself distinguished between necessity and certainty.

R1: I think PSR means that for everything that is the case it was either (a) caused to be the case or (b) it could not have been otherwise (it is necessary) or (c) it is self-evident (self-explanatory). Demonstrations of these facts are explanations, and they exist (actually) if they have been presented, or (in principle) if they can be worked out/presented. The fact that some explanations do not as yet exist in an articulated form is not a logical problem for the principle that an explanation exists potentially. Explanations are abstract things, and therefore do not exist some "where", although people talk metaphorically about abstract things in that way by invoking abstract spaces or Platonic realms.

Q2: 'Mysterianism' [p1] seems a prejudicial category. The fact that there are "brute facts" at any given time is relative to state of knowledge at that time. What does it mean for something to be "in principle incomprehensible"? This represents a gesture by the rational mind to trump uncertainty by "proving" that it is necessary-rendering it rational on a meta-level. It is simpler to admit that there is no justification to assume that knowledge can be complete-including the knowledge that it must be incomplete.

R2: Mysterianism is a prejudicial category, but by no means a pejorative one. As you are no doubt aware it is not is not our invention, but rather an existent category in philosophy, especially Philosophy of Mind. It is meant to encapsulate assumptive positions people really do take relative to brute facts. In these terms brute facts (without scare quotes) means facts that are necessarily brute, and not placeholders for contingent ignorance. "Brute facts" (with scare quotes) are placeholders for mysteries that can in principle be elucidated. This much is definitional. PSR supposes that that there are only "brute facts" and no (necessarily) brute facts. Mysterianism is a position about the "brute fact"/brute fact dichotomy. Weak Mysterianism is the view that there are no brute facts but only "brute facts", facts that are forever beyond our capacity to elucidate, but are not incorrigibly mysterious, just as quantum mechanics is beyond dogs to ever work out, but not mysterious in principle. Strong Mysterianism is the view that there are brute facts - facts that are inherently 'just so', and hence inexplicable to anyone, no matter how intelligent or well equipped.

Q3: I am not convinced that energy "merely represents the ability of a concrete thing to change" [p2] What about the ability to cause other things to change?

R3: There is indeed a close link between causal powers and energy. To quote Bunge, for natural things "the concept of energy can be used to define that of causation, and to distinguish the latter from correlation. Indeed, causation may be defined as energy transfer" (Matter and Mind, 2010, p.66)

Q4: The idea that properties can average out to net zero is seminal. It makes all properties, microscopic or macroscopic, relative to scale and essentially statistical-that is, ultimately the result of brute facts (statistical data).

R4: Thanks for the endorsement of our new property concept. One caution though: we did not mean to imply that concrete properties are grounded in abstract facts, but rather that the ways in which properties manifest are relative to concrete scale and concrete context. I don't think that statistical measures can be called brute facts, since they are contingent reflections of concrete situations. They can be taken as useful "brute facts" about the behaviour of concrete things, though.

...continuing on from previous post:

Q5: I would agree with Parmenides that the world must have "always" existed (in some form), and for similar reasons add that it can have no bottom or top (infinite in both directions of scale).

R5: I agree that that we cannot have an infinite regress in either direction of scale/complexity. So a proper explanation has to start with something like your "always existed in some form" and try to fill in details and make it compatible with empirical knowledge such as Big Bang Cosmology, perhaps via something like Multiverse Cosmology. The big challenge is getting the explanation down to necessary or self-evident facts.

Q6: [p3] I would like to know more about Peter Inwagen's idea that "we can only understand what logically follows from what is logically necessary or self-evident". Can you direct me to a particular source? I relate this idea to Vico's verum factum, since logical systems are human constructions. Also, Wikipedia says about Inwagen's ideas in Material Beings, that "all material objects are either elementary particles or living organisms. Every composite material object is made up of elementary particles, and the only such composite objects are living organisms. A consequence of this view is that everyday objects such as tables, chairs, cars, buildings, and clouds do not exist." This intriguing idea suggests that only organisms are intrinsically "organized", because they self-organize. All other appearances of organization are human constructs-either projections upon nature (clouds) or actual human artifacts (chairs, cars, etc).

R6: You might start with van Inwagen's 1983 book "An Essay on Free Will" and the general discussion in Alexander Pruss's 2006 book "The Principle of Sufficient Reason". I agree with you that logical systems are human constructions, but I think we construct them after the example of Natural causal consistency. In the words of physicist Hubert Reeves, although it at first appears that Nature is structured like a language, it turns out that language is structured because Nature is (John Searle's argument against ontological Idealism essentially follows the same line of thought).

I think Van Inwagen is wrong when he says that "everyday objects...do not exist". It is one of the central findings of systems theory that systems are systems in part because they contain processes that define and maintain their boundaries (see for example p.51 of Laszlo, A., & Krippner, S. (1998). Systems Theories: Their origins, foundations, and development. In J. C. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception, Advances in Psychology Vol. 126, pp. 47-74) One can carve up the world any way one likes using set theory (as they do in the branch of philosophy called Mereology), but if you use systems theory you carve reality at its own joints, and avoid the sort of paradoxes the mereologists keep encountering.

Q7: We "have to accept some brute facts" not in order to save free will but because (on the basis of experience so far) we are never in a position to do otherwise. If the world is indefinitely complex, then in principle there will always be brute facts; theory can never fully capture indefinite complexity.

R7: We do not know for sure yet whether the world is indefinitely complex, but we have some reasons, from Systems Philosophy, to think that it isn't. All the same, we have theories such as fractal theory or chaos theory can characterise indefinite complexity without themselves being indefinitely complex, so complexity in the world is not, to my mind, a cause for concern about finding ultimate explanations.

Q8: There is no a prior reason to think that "explanatory chains must terminate" [p3, Sec 5]. I agree with the view you call "organicism", but would point out that PSR and the "reasonableness" of the Systems approach may be wishful thinking on the part of reason itself. Nothing compels PSR but our desire for certainty.

R8: I agree that there are no a priori reasons for the validity of PSR. However, the foundational arguments in Systems Philosophy show that there are empirical reasons for supporting PSR that go beyond our desires for certainty. Briefly, the argument is that since there is trans-disciplinary order in the world there is an underlying order governing change at all levels. Systems Philosophers are (amongst other things) trying to characterise that order exactly so that we can move beyond 'pious hope' arguments for PSR to an empirically grounded one. The basic argument is in Ervin Laszlo's 1972 book "Introduction to Systems Philosophy". I have a paper under review that develops the argument further, and if you'd like I'll send you a copy when it comes out.

...continuing on from previous post:

Q9: [p5, Sec 7] 'Systems' are human creations projected onto Nature. That is, all systems are inherently deductive systems; their fit to real natural structure is an empirical matter. If it is "reasonable to assume PSR", it is because PSR is an imperial decree of reason itself.

R9: Humans can and do create formal systems that can represent aspects of the concrete world. But this is only useful to the degree that they map the nature of concrete systems that have their systems properties independently of the sense we make of them. Early systems theorists flirted with the idea of arbitrary system-boundaries in Nature, just as social scientists flirted with Constructivist ideas about concepts generally. Thankfully systems theory has founded its grounding in the realities of Nature, and Constructivism is now headed the same way. See also my response to your question 6.

Q10: I submit that empirical facts cannot be "self-evident or logically necessary". Only theorems provable within a deductive system can be so. That is, self-evident truths are human assertions. "Brute facts" may be "placeholders for discoveries and explanations yet to come whether or not "we assume PSR". What limits discoveries at deeper levels may not be any ontological structure or an ultimate bottom but epistemic limits.

R10: I'm not sure we have good handle yet on what counts potentially as an empirical fact, so would not like to exclude that there can be ones that are "self-evident or logically necessary".

You are right that truth-claims about Nature are human assertions, but if PSR is right then when they are true they must be true in virtue of properties that inhere in Natural things (something about Nature makes them true). If such a truth-claim is logically necessary the implication is that the part of Nature it represents cannot have been otherwise than it is. In our view the fact that concrete things have energy is such a claim.

Q11: [p6] It does not follow from "the 'ultimate stuff' must have energetic properties" that it "must have energy on average". Quite the contrary, in your earlier discussion (Sec 4), the instantaneous properties of virtual particles average out to "nothing".

R11: If the "ultimate stuff" did not have energy "on average" it would have no energy, and by definition it would then not be a concrete material substance any more. That would make it supernatural or non-existent, either of which option would render it unsuitable for grounding understandable explanations. So if PSR is true, then the ultimate stuff must have energy on average.

The instantaneous physical properties of the QV average out to "nothing", but its ability to change in physical ways (physical energy) cannot be nothing at any time. Its net physical energy is always positive, but the intensity of every specific manifestation of physical energy (e.g. charge, mass or spin) is zero.

Q12: [p8, Sec 10] Personally, I don't believe in any resolution of the mind-body problem that relies on "primitive properties of fundamental matter", other than its ability to self-organize. I believe the solution lies elsewhere. Penrose's "microtubules", for example, are no more plausible than Descartes' pineal gland.

R12: I agree with you that microtubules and pineal glands are implausible foundations for an account of psychonic properties. However, the ability to self-organise leads only to ordered complexity, and does not seem to have the 'makings' for the emergence of qualities such as subjectivity, qualia, intentionality, etc. from physical or spatial properties, as e.g. David Chalmers has argued. I agree that self-organisation is a crucial factor in cosmological evolution, but I do not see how it could be sufficient if you start with ultimate stuff that potentially has only spatial, physical and organisational qualities.

Dan, thanks again for reading our essay so carefully, and for your interesting questions. There is clearly much overlap between our concerns, and our essays clearly target similar foundational questions. Good luck with yours, we will be posting some comments there soon.

Best wishes,

David.

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  • Post #20

Hi David. My comments are as follows, and I rated your essay. I think that you have done a fine job of discussing an enormously deep and complex array of topics and concerns that are, moreover, complicated by the common use and definition/understanding of terms/words. I applaude your courage and tenacity for going after the deepest and most profound problems and understandings.

My thoughts are as follows:

1) I like your notion of an averaging. This would necessarily invove fundamentally balanced and equivalent inertia and gravity in order to fundamentally balance and average acceleration as well. This would fundamentally demonstrate F=ma. My esssay proves this.

2) I made some earlier comments on the nature of energy. You did, as George Ellis said, a nice job discussing it.

3) I will gladly answer any questions from you regarding areas/points between our essays, including any fine points of your essay. You will find that mine also goes after the deepest questions in physics.

4) Heisenberg thought that physics could not account for the "stability of form" of living organisms (and us). He was dead wrong on that. The physics of our direct experience is necessarily the most highly ordered and stable. How could we have such ordered and extensive and various thoughts if it were not?

The self represents, forms, and experiences a comprehensive approximation of experience in general by combining conscious and unconscious experience.

5) The experience of memory is a physical experience.

    Hi Frank,

    Thank you for your comments and for rating our essay. I do agree with your aim to find a rational basis for the range of human experiences. The orderedness of the world as we experience it seems to me to suggest that there are underlying rules for us to find. I will read and rate your essay soon.

    Regards,

    Julie

    Dear G S Sandhu,

    Thank you for reading our essay and your positive comments. I have read yours too and will be posting some comments there. I strongly agree with your position that we should not conflate models with reality, and I am impressed with your clear writing style and practical approach.

    I agree with you that it would be a shame if people try to bias the competition results through tactical voting, so it is important that many people make lots of votes so the biases can be averaged out.

    I like your essay very much and will rate it highly. I hope to see us both in the finals!

    Best wishes,

    David

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    • Post #24

    Your "energeum" explains dark energy and accelerating expansion but it could also explain, alternatively, the Hubble redshift in a STATIC universe:

    Eugene I. Shtyrkov: "At present it is ascertained that vacuum is not an "empty space" - rather, it is a certain material continuum with quite definite although still unknown properties. This has been confirmed by observation of vacuum effects such as "zero-oscillations", vacuum polarization, particle generation by electromagnetic interactions. Therefore it is reasonable to suggest that physical vacuum could have internal friction due to its own small but real viscosity, which in the end produces redshift. (...) ...the differential equation for the speed of light dc/dt=-Ho*c(t)"

    Shtyrkov refers to a decreasing speed of light which is too dangerous (one may lose one's job) but at least you could have mentioned the euphemistic "tired light" hypothesis: Due to interaction with the constituents of the vacuum, photons lose energy (not speed!).

    Pentcho Valev

      7 days later

      ulie & David

      Well written. A rare, important and sensible philosophical approach. I also fly the flag for philosophy and ontology in my own essay, agree the PSR, agree empirical facts can be "self-evident or logically necessary" and explore a mechanistic route of cause and effect. Also then; a "system" is "a whole that functions as a whole in virtue of the relationships between its parts"

      I was once pressed on what the 'neutral energy' 'was', (your "energeum") and also gave it a name, to show how semantic the question was (I called it 'ground comprathene'). But at a 'ground state' where fluctuations can be positive or negative. Do you accept there are some things we may never know? Of course as we only know anything by it's qualities, may we end up 'knowing' energium' as well as anything else?

      I agree your Fig 1 but then link the top and bottom to show it to be a loop, or in fact a toroid, but I stay physical and derive a unique logical ontological architecture of unity which even gives a logical re-interpretation of Copenhagen!

      I even use the forbidden word 'ether' but do shy away from majoring on it's essential nature. That can follow from the more important logical conclusions. I do hope you can read and comment from a PSR view.

      Best of luck, and many thanks.

      Peter

        Dear Pentcho Valev

        Thank you reading our essay and commenting on it. We are pleased that you found our argument about dark energy convincing, and see our model as having further explanatory potential.

        The 'tired light' hypothesis is intriguing, but we did not have space or time to include consideration of it our essay ;-) Your own essay takes such effects into consideration, though, doesn't it?

        Best wishes,

        David

        Hi Peter,

        By a nice coincidence we read you over the weekend, and were about to post on your page! Thank you for making contact, and your supportive comments. We are clearly aligned on many aspects, as I have just remarked on your page. To your question, I think we can end up knowing 'energeum' as well as anything else, but it will take a lot of good philosophy and good science to unravel. I do not think there are any real limits on what we can find out - the history of science shows that one cannot estimate what is impossible to investigate. Some philosophers deny PSR on the basis that the entanglement relationship is a counter-example. But it is only a denial of local causal realism under the Copenhagen Interpretation, and hidden variable models might yet explain it. Does your logical re-interpretation of the Copenhagen Interpretation amount to a hidden variable model? I'd like to hear more about it...

        Best wishes,

        David

        Dear David and Julie,

        Frankly, I usually take no interest in others' philosophies but your fine essay is very clearly written and, like others commenting here, I have found some commonality with a very general framework I use to relate aspects of physics in what I see as their proper context. I have a few very specific comments about your essay - I'd very much appreciate your brief consideration.

        Adopting here and speculatively extending your conception of "energeum" (with rationale below) I suggest a physical test for its existence: that the rate of virtual particle annihilations will vary with vacuum energeum density; that the rate of annihilations will vary (possibly to to some slight degree) in relation to local gravitational effects; that a vacuum chamber on the Earth's surface will produce more annihilations over a given period of time than will an identical chamber in Earth orbit or on the Moon, for example. I have no idea whether there's any existing evidence for or against this conjecture...

        I suggest this test because of I envision (unfortunately I have no math) that gravitation is not fundamentally a property of matter but rather, a kinetic interaction between the material property of mass (potential energy) and energeum. I propose that aggregated mass physically produces a gradient field of enrgeum, a diminishing local contraction (curvature) of dimensional spacetime.

        I think understanding gravitational effects as the interaction of two distinct forces would help explain much about its nature: its apparent absence at quantum scales (even confirmation of the Higgs mechanism provides no quantum theory of gravitation, only for the property of mass), it apparent local weakness compared to the strictly material strong, weak and electromagnetic forces, and the comparatively vast range of its spatial effectiveness.

        While general relativity very precisely describes the effects of gravitation as mass proportional changes to an abstract system of external dimensional coordinates of spacetime, as I understand there is no physical element described whose changes are reflected in the changed dimensional coordinates. While that may be satisfactory to physicists and mathematicians, I'm a simple man who prefers physical elements and fundamentally mechanical processes. I have already been thinking that the changing dimensional coordinates actually represent some energy contained within space that imparts directional acceleration to material objects. Furthermore, I envision that Newton's attractive force represents the interaction of two directionally opposed gradient fields of energeum.

        I'll stop here, hoping that you can understand what I'm attempting to say and perhaps that you can find that it complements your theory of space.

        I must be clear - I have no academic background or specific experience in philosophy, physics or math. However, I do have >30 years experience in information systems at a high level and very large scales. If, as I see mentioned in your extensive bio, you have any significant background in systems analysis I think you might find my brief (properly 3 page) essay interesting - I'd be most interested in any comments you might have. I must say though that I have no interest whatsoever in any rating you may or may not like to make... It's descriptive title is Inappropriate Application of Kepler's Empirical Laws of Planetary Motion to Spiral Galaxies Created the Perceived Galaxy Rotation Problem - Thereby Establishing a Galactic Presence for the Elusive, Inferred Dark Matter.

        I appreciate any consideration that you can give to these thoughts, and certainly any comments you might have. Sorry though - I won't promise to give your excellent essay a great rating in exchange...

        Sincerely, Jim Dwyer

          David

          Thanks for the support. Logical Copenhagen is also well described here;http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1390. The variable is not so much hidden as right before our eyes. In fact spread all over the surface of every lens in the universe!

          Wheeler was right, it's the most; "utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?" (Lerner 1992).

          It is simply that, of two (tandem) pairs of photons doing c through any medium, the ones interacting with a co-moving lens change speed, thus the distance between them (or 'wavelength' changes. Not just by media refractive index n, but by the motion v of the lens. The speed of the pair passing by is not measured in 'Proper Time' so would only be 'apparent' (c+v) if it could be measured. Christian Doppler found but only half explained it. In two words it is 'delta lambda'. Implemented by re-emission at c by all electrons, including at the 'surface charge' Transition zone.

          Just envisage the two photons (or wave peaks) passing along the optical nerve of the human passing by, or the cable from the detector, compared to the two passing by unimpeded.

          The Copenhagen interpretation is then in the same class as the tree in the forest. The moon reflects em waves, but if no lens is there to detect them, they remain 'invisible'. Yet we can tell by scattering off OTHER bodies (dust in the air, or beside out shadow) that the waves exist. We then detect light scattered at c locally.

          It only gets complex when we have to overcome deeply ingrained wrong assumptions. Did that explanation work for you? Did anything not seem intuitive? As someone less 'familiar' than me can you express it better?

          Best wishes

          Peter

          Hello David and Julie,

          Thanks again for your very encouraging comments on my essay. I've enjoyed yours - it's well written and interesting. I can only make a general comment, not so much about your essay, but about the kind of areas you cover.

          It seems to me that in some areas of philosophy, 'the jury is still out' on all the major questions. In physics, we can at least look back at the past, and see which ideas turned out to work, and which ones didn't. So we learn from experience, and pick up patterns in the answers that have been found.

          But when I look at some of the philosophical questions you talk about, I just feel, how can we get a handle on that? We've got nothing to compare it with. We're still waiting for the answers to come in for all the related questions, and it may be some time to wait. So it's hard to develop techniques for getting answers, as we haven't necessarily got even one correct one to calibrate things with. I'm not saying this applies to all areas, and that's just a first reaction.

          Anyway, best wishes, and good luck,

          Jonathan

            Dear Jim,

            Thank you for your appreciative comments, and interesting theoretical speculations. I was an engineer before I was a philosopher, and I continue to try and think in 'grounded' ways, as you clearly do too. I agree that we need a 'concrete' interpretation of the curvature of space. A number of essayists in this competition have indeed argued for this, for example Israel Perez says directly: "the warping of space can be physically reinterpreted as the change in the density of the material medium". That seems very clear to me, and as you suggest about our model, once one has the mechanism of energeum inter-converting with space one can think in such terms about this 'medium'. Although in our essay we only argued for the conversion of energeum into space to explain the dark energy phenomenon, the reverse interaction, of space converting into energeum would allow for space to have a physically effective variable density. If the presence of mass is what catalyses this conversion, then this would produce a spatial density gradient proportional to mass that would exactly match the 'warp in space' mathematical model.

            I have read your essay, and I think you make a very clear case that we should not expect galaxy rotations to match up to Keplerian rotation curves in a straightforward way. That said, I'm not sure why this leads you to question the dark matter postulate, since the way in which galaxies rotate remains a substantial mystery anyway, or at least so it seems to me. Way out of my expertise here, but as a philosopher I applaud your attack on sloppy assumptions. Sorry I cannot comment on yours as stimulatingly as you did on ours.

            With best wishes,

            David

            Dear David.

            Thanks you for your kind remarks! I'll try to read the essay's you've mentioned.

            Regarding "I'm not sure why this leads you to question the dark matter postulate," perhaps it wasn't clear that the presence of galactic dark matted was originally postulated to account for the discrepancy between expected Keplerian rotation curves and the relatively flat curves actually observed for spiral galaxies. It should follow then that if the discrepancy was based on invalid expectations then there is no requirement for dark matter (additional mass) to account for the observed characteristics.

            Understanding the dynamics of galactic rotation is yet another, quite complex matter. However, several groups of researchers, as mentioned in my two page "Supplemental Info." section, have produced analytical models that successfully describe the rotation of spiral galaxies using only properly applied Newtonian dynamics and universal gravitation, or general relativity, without invoking any dark matter or modified gravity. As I understand, the objects within galaxy disks all interact gravitationally, making the entire disk a self-gravitating, loosely bound, rotating composite object, unlike planets that each, in effect, individually orbit the exceedingly massive Sun.

            I hope this helps somewhat. Perhaps I didn't explain clearly enough in the main body of the essay?

            Thanks very much again for your interesting comments!

            Sincerely, Jim

            Dear David,

            I've read through Israel Perez's essay, but the concept of a material medium doesn't seem to be able to produce the dimensional curvature of spacetime effect described by general relativity - only an energy field that can impart kinetic motion to matter seems able to so.

            I can't precisely describe the mechanism that might be involved, but it seems intuitively natural that the localized aggregation of the potential energy of mass would produce the complementary effect of locally contracting surrounding space-energy. Like the localization of potential mass, the contracted space-energy (energeum) would be directed to the focal point of contraction.

            It would be the energy gradient produced by energeum contraction that produces the directional accelerating effect of gravitation. IMO, Einstein's 'light moving in a straight line through curved space' was a description necessary to convince astronomers to test his eclipse predictions, since they could not consider that light could be curved! I see this more as the propagation of light waves being temporarily tangentally redirected as it traverses a (radial) field of directional space-energy in the proximity of a sufficiently massive object.

            Well, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I think only energy within space could contribute to the effect of gravitation - no material medium density could cause the motion produced by gravitation.

            If the manifestation of virtual particles, as I think can be measured by matter-antimatter annihilations, is in turn a measure of spatial energy content, or density, then I would expect that a gravitational gradient field of condensed space would produce varying rates of virtual particle-antiparticle annihilations. If the virtual annihilation rate did vary with gravitational effects and this relation could not be explained in any other way, it might offer physical evidence of energeum! At least, that's my thinking...

            I'm not capable of pursuing these ideas, so if they seem to you to have any potential I would hope that you might be able to further pursue them. I'd certainly be glad to help in any way I can.

            Obviously I do find that your conception of energeum dovetails quite nicely with my thinking about gravitation - I have also thought that if universal expansion were accelerating it would also require the action of kinetic space-energy. Moreover, I suspect that the existence of energeum is necessary for even the initial expansion of the universe; that the primordial energy that was not converted to condensed matter would have filled space. This fundamental, omni-directed energeum might be evidenced by the dispersal of gases in space...

            Conversely, like dark matter, I'm actually highly skeptical that the acceleration of spacetime expansion and dark energy was properly inferred, depending as it does on the constant peak emission luminosity of type Ia supernovae produced by accreting matter onto a white dwarf until it reaches the Chandrasekhar limit - recently found to be more often than expected produced instead by the merger of white dwarfs of varying masses. But that's another discussion...

            Frankly, I'm much more excited about the potential for energeum in the production of gravitational effects. If my thoughts about a test measurement have any validity, it would certainly be more feasible to evaluate...

            Sorry to ramble on - I have been thinking for some time that some form of kinetic space energy was necessary for the physical production of gravtational effects. I really appreciate any further consideration you might be able to give to the subject.

            Sincerely, Jim

            Dear Jim,

            Thank you for the further interesting thoughts. I would like to develop these ideas further with you, but since we are now getting well off the topic of my essay, I will email you off-forum to discuss/develop these further.

            Sincerely, David

            Dear David,

            Yes - that'd be appropriate. I look forward to it.

            Thanks, Jim