After the Transition “from It to Bit”: Is This the Science Formerly Called Physics? by Lev Goldfarb

Dear Lev,

Your essay strikes at the root of the foundation of today's physics. You say and I agree, "...in the physics of the last century, the most basic conceptual foundations of today's physics are undoubtedly of spatial origin".

In your ETS representation,

- is a point a geometric fiction or a physically real object with extension, (monad)?

- can a line have length with zero breadth?

- can a surface having length and breadth but with a zero thickness still exist physically?

- can abstract objects, existing only in the Platonic realm form a part of a physically real object in this physical realm? (Noting that by Euclid's definitions, the extremities of physically real bodies are surfaces, and if lines physically exist, their extremities are points).

You can check out Euclid's definitions of the properties of space, here

[link:farside.ph.utexas.edu/euclid/Elements.pdf/] and [link:aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/

I have a paper submitted in the contest based on a 'foundation of a spatial origin', titled On the road not taken. You may check it out and see how it fits with ETS theory.

Regards,

Akinbo.

The hyperlinks didnt come out as expected. Accessible links to Euclid's definitions can be found at

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/

http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/euclid/Elements.pdf

Lev

Thank you for the clarifications. I have looked again at the diagram E1 in section iv and indeed a temporal sequential struct explanation is different than the physical one, and clearer inasfar as the cause-effect chain is concerned. I think I am beginning to see where you are heading. Now if everything in the Universe is connected as a lattice or network at the vacuum level and in matter and energy, such structs become a natural outcome...

Sorry I have a one-track mind - I was thinking of my Beautiful Universe theory. I am too old to be diverted from the task of developing this model - but I wish you luck with your interesting work.

Vladimir

Dear Lev,

I have reread your essay. ETS has a lot of promise but there is still a lot of work to be done. For example, 'spatial' and 'space' appears 42 times but no where do we know whether the resulting geometry will be Euclidean or a modified form. How I wish you could harmonize your struct with the 'monad' of Leibniz & the Pythagoreans. Then, things will be simpler instead of learning a whole new theory all over. But as I said your theory is quite fundamental.

Good luck in the contest.

Akinbo

*You can check a simple, translated Leibniz monadology referenced in my paper, especially his first 8 paragraphs. Then for space, Check Sir Heath's book on Euclid's geometry, since Geometry is the science of the nature of space.

Lev

"Of course, we don't know what "awareness" means scientifically"

Yes we do. You are falling into the same trap as Edwin and many others, by not first differentiating the knowable from the not-knowable. We can only know (be aware) of what is manifest to us (hypothesis being in effect virtual sensing). In other words , physical existence is that form of existence which is all that is potentially knowable to us. Whether we can attain knowledge of all that is doubtful, but another issue, the point is that the potential was there. Whether there is an alternative is irrelevant, because we cannot know it. And knowing it, ie being aware of it, involves the receipt of physical input (supplemented by the hypothesising of input which could have been received had some identifiable physical issue not prevented that). The subsequent processing of this input received is irrelevant, as that is not physics. The utilisation of representational devices to express this knowledge is another matter.

Paul

Lev,

Very interesting and definitely in sync w/ my entry in many ways. Forgive me if I'm completely misunderstanding, but would you agree that your proposal is something of an evolution/extension of qualitative analysis ushered in by chaos phase-space mapping?

Hello, dear Lev!

Excellent essay, great ideas. I agree completely, «we need to look for fundamentally new formal tools not offered by the present mathematics.» Category "structure" (in Russian, "structure"), "structural memory" to the heart of the new physics. But you must also update the category of "space" and "time", link them to the "matter" and its unconditional states and thus to "seize" the structure of space, understand the nature of time. Good luck in the contest! With respect, Vladimir

The roller coaster update:

3, 1, 10, 2, 6, 5, 5, 1, 6, 2, 3, 8, 3, 1, 7, 9

Lev,

The "desire to see something 'mental'...emerge as the principal element in the structure of the Universe" is as old as the theistic religions. See my paper to see how Bishop Berkeley hoped to accomplish just that as he placed physics on the path of merely describing the contents of the observer's consciousness, as if no physical Cosmos existed. That path led to Relativity and QM. The Cosmos was replaced by the observer's information.

You ask, "Which new non-spatial form(s) of 'data' presentation will reveal the recently invisible and allow us to understand adequately the formative processes in Nature?". We already have it, it is called "natural philosophy". It is the use of our full intellectual capabilities to reach beyond the "information" of your conscious experience and create theories about what the Cosmos is made of, what causes all its processes, and how it evolves its complex structures including ourselves.

Your ETS formalism may prove to be a useful tool of philosophy. It will still, like mathematics, require human philosophical intelligence to abstract from reality and produce the symbolic representation, and then again to apply the representation to any particular real situation.

Henry

Dear Lev

Your analysis is very good, but no specific conclusions and further develop so many questions. Do you think:

Information is defined as : The absorption and transmission the impact of material.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802

Dear Lev Goldfarb,

Your diagrams look somewhat similiar to the ones that appear as pictorial representations of dagger-compact monoidal categories. Is there a connection between your ideas and the work of Bob Coecke on understanding fundamental physical structure in the language of category theory?

Best,

Alexei Grinbaum