On The Road Not Taken by Akinbo Ojo

Dr. Ojo,

I enjoyed reading your elegantly written essay, with its theme of "taking the road less traveled by". But I would like to focus on a more recent fork in the road, associated with wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics. Given the difficulty in choosing between a wave route and a particle route, the physics community in the 1930s refused to decide, and insisted that one can travel along both roads simultaneously. This is logically inconsistent, and is not resolved by application of abstract mathematics. I addressed this in last year's essay, "The Rise and Fall of Wave-Particle Duality" , where I pointed out that a consistent picture of quantum waves (not point particles) on the micro level leads directly to classical particle trajectories on the macro level. In this year's essay, "Watching the Clock: Quantum Rotations and Relative Time" , I show how the same consistent quantum picture leads simply to general relativity, but in a way that avoids mathematical artifacts such as event horizons and black holes. This is highly heretical, but such a unified foundation is what Einstein and others sought for without success. Furthermore, breakthroughs in science are not obtained by following the crowd; I, too, prefer to take the road less traveled by.

Alan Kadin

Dr. Ojo,

That is a very well presented argument for extended point objects. While I certainly agree the zero point is an abstraction canceled by the very laws of abstract math it supports, ie, anything multiplied by zero is zero, thus a zero dimensional point is no more real than a zero dimensional apple, I think monads have their own conceptual problems, in the border issue. Necessarily a border would have to be smaller than the dimension it limits, but this refutes the claim of smallest possible measure. If the border is only as small as the dimension it defines, then the property would be a wave, or approximation that could extend to infinity, as such units cannot be isolated from one another. They combine, like Bose-Einstein condensate.

Think of this in math that we are not actually adding the contents of sets, but the sets and coming up with a larger set. 2+2=4 is 2 sets of 2 added into a set of 4. As the parts of your body are not just a sum, but a larger whole.

I think we need to go back and reconsider the idea of space as having no physical properties, because this does give it two attributes, since it cannot be bound, bent, divided, etc. So it would be absolute(inertial) and infinite. Consider the centrifugal force of Newton's buckets. It is not due to any outside frame, but the relationship of spin to inertia. The forces are not pulling against space, but each other. If it were only one bucket, it would fly off in a straight line. So the buckets are like 1+(-1), while space is 0. Nothing pulls against space, but against an opposite force in space. It is shown that overall space is flat, ie observed expansion is matched by gravitational contraction. What gets overlooked with the expanding universe model is that we can only observe the light of distant galaxies that has managed to travel between all the intervening galaxies. So if the space between galaxies is said to expand in inverse proportion to which it is collapsing into them and we can only observe the light that has traveled between the galaxies, it would appear the overall space is expanding because we can only see half the effect, that which expanded, not what was contracted, on this distant light.

Consider the Big Bang model still assumes a stable speed of light. In other words, it is said that galaxies x lightyears apart will eventually grow to be 2x lightyears apart and eventually fade from view. This distance is still being considered in terms of stable lightyears. What dimension of space determines the length of a lightyear, if it is argued the very essence of space is expanding? How can space be expanding when our only real measure of it is still assumed to be stable?

If we are to posit that for every effect, there is an opposite effect, then the opposite of absolute would be infinite. What occupies space is mass and radiant energy. Mass seems attracted to the inert, while light is attracted to the infinite. The resulting cycle would seem to be expressed in galaxies drawing mass into a vortex and light escaping it to expand out to near infinity. That microwave background radiation would logically be the solution to Olber's paradox, the light of ever more distant sources redshifted off the visible spectrum and those fluctuations in it are not the embryos of future galaxies, but the shadows of ever more distant ones.

It should also be noted the only reason to insist on recession as the cause of redshift is the insistence on thinking of light as only a point particle, that can not be redshifted otherwise, yet how do we know light actually travels as a point and not an expanding wave? It has no internal gravity or mass to hold it to a point, so its nature is to expand and it is only when it is received by a detector, does it collapse to the necessary quantity to "pop" the electron to a higher orbit.

So "space" collapses gravitationally, because points of mass draw together, but its measure expands because light does. The monad goes to infinity.

Akinbo: I think the reasons you adduce in favor of something like Leibniz's monads are basically sound -- and they're the reasons Leibniz gave, as well as the reasons Kant gave for "things in the themselves" (i.e. noumena). The argument is this: the physical things and properties we observe and measure (e.g. mass, extension, charge, etc.) are simply *relations* between things. Mass *is* what causes a warping of space time (i.e. mass *is* what it *does*). Similarly, charge is what causes two things to attract and repel in a very different ways (via the laws of electromagnetism). All physical properties are defined in terms of *relations*. And your point -- like Leibniz's, like Kant's -- is that there must be something simple and intrinsic *behind* the relations.

This is all perfectly right, and I agree. The problem is that it can't be *monads*. Why? Because monads are supposed to be something like point-particles, and quantum physics shows that there are no determinate point-particles, merely probabilistic blurs. Can you fit the monad hypothesis into this picture? How?

Dr. Ojo,

I thought your essay was very well written. As I have explained in my essay BITTERS, the real Universe and everything in it is unique, once. As conspicuously noted in your essay, philosophers and mathematicians have historically always ignored unique in favor of attempting to propound some sort of repeatable identical theoretical states. They have easily described the identical properties of the invisible.

Dr. Ojo,

You wrote "then the definition of the point and other objects of geometry

will eventually need to be revisited." While I enjoy many aspects of your refreshing approach, I prefer to simply distinguish instead between the ideal Euclidean mathematical object point, Leibniz's infinitesimal, and the assumed smallest physical entity.

You might read earlier essays of mine. Recently I got aware of what I consider an inconsistency in Wheeler's thinking: The dichotomy of yes/no-questions corresponds to rational numbers. The calculus used as to derive putatively physical singularities is based on the trichotomy of the real numbers. If Wheeler is correct, and the reality can be thought as a superposition on yes/no-basis, then the singularities are mere mathematical fictions like for instance the middle line inside of a electric conductor.

Eckard

Monads are what matter is pre-measurement.

Particles, atoms, molecules, and stuff in general exist as measurements the monads made of themselves.

Dear Eckard,

I have read your essays 369 and 527. Both reflect your strong engineering background. Signalling as well as Classical and Quantum measurements take place in an arena we call 'space'. All are agreed on this.

Surely, whether or not this arena is a "nothing", i.e. merely a relational concept which by implication will be infinitely divisible being a mathematical entity as propagated by the Platonic school OR a "something", i.e. a substantival thing, which by implication of the action-reaction principle must be capable of acting and being acted upon, must have implications for signalling and measurements.

Again, in line with the theme of this year's essay, if the arena is a substantival thing, then Nature can store its information in it.

Being an engineer you can explore what ideas such as 'Cellular Automaton', 'A New Kind of Science' by Stephen Wolfram, 'Digital Physics' by Edward Fredkin can do for your theories on signalling (check these out initially on Wikipedia).

Until proved otherwise, for me, monads are candidates for the fundamental Cellular Automata.

Dr. Ojo,

I am terribly sorry for rudely not answering your question, I lost track of my essay comments. Uniqueness cannot be quantified, qualified or rectified. Real uniqueness cannot be contrived, constructed or construed. Nature only deals in real uniqueness once and it only produces one whole real thing once. For instance, nature has produced one real unique whole me and one real unique whole you once. Mathematicians believe that there are such things as postulated identical "whole " numbers, and these identical "whole" numbers can be odd or even and they can be repeatedly divided, multiplied and equated, provided some sort of abstract identical laws are applied to the process. Whereas there is no limit to the divisibility of an abstract 1, a real one cannot ever be divided.

Unique real nature does not provide any separable lines or surfaces.

Dear Sir,

The most striking thing about your essay is the glossary at the beginning. For unambiguous communication, we must assign precise and fixed meaning to the technical terms we use. Unfortunately, most scientists use an operational definition, which can be suitably manipulated in all possible manner. Congratulations for this bold approach. However, we wish you should have also defined space, time and dimension, since you have discussed these quite often. And your ending is really dramatic.

The first 5 pages of your essay can be summarized as follows: Dimensions are perceived (ocular perception) through electromagnetic radiation, where an electric field and a magnetic field, move perpendicular to each other and also to the direction of their motion. Thus, we have three mutually perpendicular dimensions which differentiate the "internal structural space" - bare mass from the "external relational space" - the radiative mass. For this reason, we classify the states of matter as solid, fluid or gaseous, depending upon whether the dimension is fixed, unfixed or unbound. A point, which does not have "internal structural space", cannot have dimension. The outgoing electro-component associated with heat energy also propagates through conduction, convection and radiation in objects associated with these states. But what about the propagation of a point, which does not have "internal structural space", but has "external relational space" (because it has existence)? Like a photon it radiates. What is its life-time?

Time is the ordered sequential arrangement of events that shows their mutual degree of priority or posterity just like space is the interval between objects. In absolute terms, no event can be said to be the first event or the last event. Hence time, like space, is infinite. But unlike space, time comes in cycles - from being to becoming to growth, transformation, transmutation and finally destruction. This is the life-time. These cycles are different for different species. Hence relativistically, they lead to time dilation. Since everything moves like a wave which is cyclic, the minimum life time can be the time taken to cover one wave length. And that is also the maximum life time for it, because it has no dimension. Only the wave existed to give its perception indirectly. This is what is meant by virtual particles pop out and vanish in the quantum states. The photon is absorbed at only one place, so the cycle of the re-emitted wave comes from that point.

There is a fine glitch in Newton's action-reaction principle. Though every action produces an equal and opposite reaction, most of the time, the reaction is non-linear, whereas the action is linear. But most text books interpret it wrongly.

The simplest answer to Zeno's paradox is that velocity is related to the mass of the body that is moving, the energy used (force applied) to move it and the total density of and the totality of the energy operating on the field. These are all mobile units against the back drop of the field that is static with reference to these. Middle of the distance is related to the frame of reference, which is relatively static with reference to the other mobile aspects. Thus, it is like comparing position and momentum. They do not commute. Hence there is no paradox, which is borne out of experience. While the middle of the distance is gradually reduced, the velocity is not reduced by the same proportion.

Rest of your points we have already discussed in our essay.

Regards,

basudeba

Akinbo,

I was very impressed with your essay. I have tried to prepare a comment on your essay, walking along the Extended Point Highway, but I am uncertain as to how the 'point' or 'extension' works in with Leibniz' belief that perception and consciousness cannot be 'mechanical'. So rather than display my confusion, I became sidetracked by a comment you made on Phil Gibbs' blog. Referring to the concept of bit as the answer to 'yes/no' questions, you asked Phil:

"What is the question?'

I believe that the essential question is 'One or Many?'

The Multiverse theory is based on hundreds of (hypothesized) fields, leading to 10-to-the-500 universes, all invoked to explain 'fine tuning'.

The Zen 'theory' is that the universe is essentially, 'not-two'.

I tend to fall on the 'not-two' side and address this in my essay. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed your essay.

Welcome to FQXi. You are already a valued participant.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Akinbo,

Beautifully written essay, good concept and well argued. I agree the fork analogy (and also used it often) and particularly the argument about the implications of non-point particles. I hope you may read my last years essay which went a long way down that road and found many implications, as well as this years, firmly distinguishing the mathematical 'point' from nature.

One proposal is that Monad density may be variable and indeed have gravitational potential, so equivalent to dark matter. I identified these in my 2011 essay as the ions of the iono/ plasmaspheres of space, which then also act as the a border of 'boundary' condition and mechanism. This may help show the great potential of the fork you take.

As Einstein said objects are not 'in' space but are 'spatially extended'. The border may then be a scattering surface defining an inertial system.

Well written, good to read, and certainly a very good score to come from me. I'd also greatly welcome your views on my own essay, which may just give you a (rather dense) taste of what I have derived may lie down that road to 'physical reality'.

Best of luck

Peter